Slashdot Mirror
Ageism in IT?
Embedded Geek writes "It's hardly a new topic, but BBC is running a story about ageism hitting Gen-X, especially in IT. As a 34 year old coder, I was horrified to hear a quote from a *hiring manager*: 'In the IT sector (and coding in particular) younger minds generally work faster -- I would rather employ a keen teenager who code programs computers quickly than an older person.' It didn't help that the person is 32 years old. My kneejerk reaction, the same one anyone else over 30 would have, is that the guy is a buffoon (I'll withhold my preferred, spectacularly vulgar, term). The problem is that I do not believe his idiocy is unique - I have definitely felt the vibe when interviewing. It's frustrating, since Gen-X is finally shedding the media hyped 'slacker' stereotype only to run headlong into this garbage. Have any other Slashdot readers seen this? What is the youngest you can be before some PHB declares you fit for the scrap-heap? Other than stocking up on hair dye and botox, what steps can I take to prepare for the future? Share your war stories here." Ask Slashdot handled this topic over two years ago. Of course, this behavior could be explained away as economic concerns, as the decision to hire younger (and typically cheaper) employees can directly affect the bottom line. However, one has to wonder if the decision to go with less experienced programmers also affects software quality, in the long run. What are your thoughts on this subject?
I don't think that the ability to learn is determined at all by age. I believe that nearly anyone can learn how to code at nearly any age. But I would liken this ability to that of playing a piano.
Sure, an older person can pick up the ability and wield a certain prowess and even artistry. But no one, to my knowledge, would argue the fact that a person who learns to play the piano in childhood has a certain "feel" for it that people who pick up this ability later in life can never attain. It's not that the older person can't play sonoriously with rhythm and emotion. But the younger player has a certain reach that will never be known to the older guy.
Andy Hertzfeld (of the original Macintosh development team) claimed that he used to be able to track and house far more complex contructs of thought, and more of them, in his mind when he was in his early 20's than he ever could at the time he was giving the interview (I would guess he was somewhere in his mid forties at that time). He called this ability "the gift of the young".
But in the book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution [barnesandnoble.com] Steven Levy described how Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra Online [sierra.com] felt a missionary zeal in converting people to the belief that learning how to program a computer could change your life. Ken met Bob and Carolyn Box, who were an older married couple in their fifties. Bob was "...a former New Yorker, a former engineer, a former race car driver, a former jockey, and a former Guinness Book of WOrld Records champion in gold panning." When they both tried to get a job working for Sierra, Ken told them to "put up something on the screen using assembly language in thirty days". According to how the story is told, they both became very able assembly language programmers. Roberta Williams (Ken's wife) considered the Boxes "inspiring" and felt that learning how to program "rehabilitated their lives".
Of course that was a long time ago, and thus far I have spoken only of the abiltity to learn and to become an able programmer. To get slightly more "on topic"; as to whether there is job market opportunities for older folk, there is no reason an employer should discriminate on the basis of age, though I'm sure that many do. But as for the pure concept of programming I myself only picked up some ability in C++ (on my own, not through any school) when I turned 30 as I realized I was getting older and it was basically "now or never". I still enjoy learning as much as I can about it, and consider it a wonderful intellectual exercise, though I have no concrete plans of doing it for a living. I've already got a stable professional life and see it as a very enjoyable and rewarding hobby.
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Or a new bunch of people becoming old enough to experience it. I'd feel worse about it if the people who are starting to experience age-based discrimination weren't the ones benefitting from it a few years ago.
'I ain't a liar, baby, and I ain't proud I just want what I'm not allowed.' -- Violent Femmes, 36-24-36
Give me a seasoned vet who has the depth and breadth of experience to have learned all of those "only happens once every x years" type of lessons over some young, fast coder who has yet to learn these lessons.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Its easier to sqeeze 80+ hrs out of someone with out kids, house and a wife.
With all these old folks posting on Slashdot? Don't they know it's a site for young people? Sheesh, go hang out on cnn.com, grandpa.
Ya know, you don't actually have to work for people of such obvious short-sightedness. In fact, I would think that hiring practices such as this would tell you the average chances for success the company would have.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
15 years old of course, before they get interested in sex, and start developing a mind of there own
What, so like Older Segways are getting less jobs than newer ones?
Oh, wait. Maybe I should read more than just the headline next time.
Do not read this sig.
As a respectable web pornographer I would have to say that when we consider subjects for our titalating erotic material, or as the 31337 call it, pr0n, we do choose to go with the younger crowds. Anyone over the age of 30 is typically considered outdated and useless. Unless of course you are visiting one of our spectacular granny sites.
postmodernsideshow.com
I think basically what it comes down to is quality. With the recent declines in the dot com sector, employers have chosen to sacrifice quality programmers for cheaper/faster ones.
Attaching age to that is an unfortunate sterotype that comes along with being in IT or almost any other profession for that matter.
It's the way of business.
Perhaps your luck will change when/if the economy bounces and employers have more to spend.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
I think what may really be happening is that younger people can devote themselves to a subject with an intensity that older people simply don't have to spare. I know I have often wished, in my studies, that I could be eighteen again and essentially have two-thirds of my time to waste totally, instead of squeezing dribbles of time out here and there for my own projects. I certainly know I spent a lot more time studying new technology back then.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Cliff, himself probably around 30, cannot spell the word "hire" correctly, while most teenagers probably can.
everyone knows younger minds are more likely to be familiar with such products as an xbox and therefore are more likely to stay brand loyal and be good windows users. as opposed to the old folk who go "xbox what?"
As you get older, you need to make sure to hone your skillset so that younger, less experienced workers cannot do what you do; whether it's significant project management experience, teambuilding, extreme expertise in an area, or something else, you need to make sure you are uniquely valuable, and that your years of experience add to your value-for-the-money, not dilute it.
Managers look at ages 18 - 25 as people they can abuse. They are inexperienced so they won't stand up for themselves, and usually aren't married so they can work them 60 hours a week for low pay.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
With all of the coding jobs going to India I would suggest giving it up.
I don't think it's because of young people having more agile minds but because like the folks from India, they'll work for less.
Personally after seeing my dad get layed off from Martin Marietta in the early 90's because he was too old, I have no trust in any companies williginess to keep older employees. So with that said, even though I'm a better then average IT person, not a GOD but good, I'm on a path to management. My goal is to have a good technical background, but to have a better management one so I can have a job even when someone wants to hire a 20 something person because young people think faster, work cheaper or something.
Get with the times, gramps.
Programming is a skill that depends on both quick thinking, and a base to stand on.
Younger people tend to pick up new skills quicker, and improvise without much effort, whereas older programmers may not learn new things very quickly, but will have more of a mastery of their respective language.
If I were a hiring manager, I would probably stick with experienced programmers if it were a mission-critical app, but someone younger if I were, say, trying to create a new game engine.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
I seriously doubt that people can't learn just as fast at an older age. I'm 46, and think I'm smarter now than when I first starting programming computers in '75. Age also tends to give one experience from which to draw on. The accumulation of previous experience comes in handy at the oddest times, I've observed.
I have no doubt that there are mentally vacuuous hiring individuals who think that younger is better however, and that is a problem. If I encountered that, I think I might send the CEO of the company a paper letter explaining what I heard at my interview, and why I wasn't going to work there.
This is totally insane. I'd much rather have an older, _more experienced_ coder, who may be slower (tho I don't believe that to be true) than some fresh out of college coder.
As someone _in_ college, looking at the vast majority of my classmates (actually, as vain as it sounds, _all_ my classmates) people coming out of college don't have any business going anywhere near critical code. You don't become a good coder by going to school, after all, you become a good coder by writing a metric shitload of code and thus getting real-world experience.
I believe I'm so much better than my classmates because I've been doing this since I was 9, and have 11 years experience writing code. And no, I _don't_ spit out as much code as I did back when I was 10 or 11, and poured out code all day long to do whatever dumb little project I worked on then.
But you know what? I code less now, because I use my experience to sit back and think about what I'm going to code, and end up not only writing higher quality code, but less code to get the same job done, as I did back when I was a dumb little kid!
Bah, I'm just ranting now. Think I've made my point at least 3 times by now. ~,^
All of us older coders who are suddenly useless can all sign SCO's NDA because we know we'll never work in IT again anyway.
MjM I only mod up...
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
I try to view the sun story at -1 and it stays at 5. Happens on a few other stories on the front page. Whats up Taco? I want my trolls
I'm 21 and am lazy as fuck. I write a Perl script every six months. Don't hire me. I hope by the time that I'm 30 I'll be writing code much more frequently. But for now stay away and let me mature.
It all comes down to moola. You can have a well experienced older coder, and one a young kid that can code well....
First of all, the kid is probably half (or less) the cost of the older guy.
Second, you can try to lure the kid into staying in the project for a long time, thereby helping maintainability.
But on the other side of the fence, older coders don't want to be in management, so they'll always be your gruntwork force. If they wanted to be in management, they woulda tried a long time ago.
Surprisingly, though, most techies have no interest in going into management...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
There are two sides to every coin. I'm a manager of five developers and six support staff.
In my experience, younger people tend to work like dogs until it stops being fun for them. They will pull all nighters all week when you're trying to launch a product, won't need to leave early for soccer and little league games, and won't get in trouble from their non-existant wife for leaving a few minutes late.
On the other hand, older coders tend to work at a more steady pace, have fewer errors, and spend their time thinking about something before they start jamming out code. They also are more reliable at showing up on time, not burning through vacation and sick time the second it becomes available, and following through with their committments.
It isn't really fair what that manager said, but I think they might have experienced some of what I just mentioned above. Although things like that generally aren't to be said "out loud" behind closed doors you'll hear many people talking about things they have observed managing people.
What's the best solution? A balance of both, in my experience. You need an effective mix, an although young people can be great coders and older people can be off sick, those are the general trends I've seen in seven years being a manager.
You have to remember that you are there to solve your employer's problems. If he's looking at someone to produce 1,000 lines of code per hour then you wouldn't be interested in the job anyway. You want to work somewhere focused on quality over quantity, and that is probably more biased to older more experienced developers in many cases than younger folks.
Case
You can't expect experience from a younger person when the older person has been around the block a few times. I'll hire the older people more often.
But face it, its cheaper to hire somebody than to give out pention checks every month!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
but where I work, the HR manager is not the hiring authority. I am, I'm 50 and I value the ability to think (which comes from experience) more than the ability to hash code quickly.
I think what you are seeing/hearing is not an industry practice.
I remember reading at one point that the average male brain reaches it's peak for absorbing and being able to use new information around the age of 34. I'm only 21 myself, but I've definitely noticed my ability to learn has improved. Of course, that may be due to the fact that I've been forcefed through university, but who's to say for sure ;)
i think it's likely new. i have 2 real thoughts on the topic (yep, that's it, just 2: i'm pretty darned old at 32, ya durned whippersnapper...):
1. of course younger employees can be paid less: they generally have less experience. but as the article notes, this is true of practically any field. it is, however, perhaps missing an important key step: at some point, don't programmer analysts get promoted to some level of management?
2. what about more experienced developers who are on h1-b visas vs. US citizens? there's a significant cost advantage in hiring employees who require h1-b sponsorship. sure, they'll keep your HR crew busy when the government announces the year's new cap but the direct costs in terms of salary are lower. does anyone know where to find figures contrasting "TCO" of h1-b visa employees vs. citizens?
ed
I would rather employ a keen teenager who code programs computers quickly than an older person.
I wrote code really fast when I was younger, that doesn't mean it was any good. The code I write today takes longer but that's because I take more time to ensure my code is solid, readable, and maintainable.
How great is your IT department if it's full of teenagers who slap their code together quickly without knowing how to do it right?
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
To put it mildly, that guy is an a$$clown.
"younger minds generally work faster", blah de blah.
I would rather work with and employ a person with experience, who can grasp the big picture and howit affects the company, who can interface well with users, who only has to do it once, rather than a teenager who has to do it 4 times, but does it 'quickly'.
Our 12 person IT dept has a 33 year old as the youngest. Ave age prob 42.
Being a fairly young IT worker, I see alot of the opposite. Older IT workers are given preference despite their experience and knowledge being similar or worse. *Especially* for any position that involves ANY sort of supervision or departmental representation.
As both a manager and a coder i agree. I am 35 when i was younger i could code for hours on end with out a break do it faster and better than i can now. I have found this to be true with most people. However this dose not mean I cant get more done in a day now than i could 15 years ago. 15 year ago i did not have a code libary or exp to draw on every thing i did i had to write then and there. Now i have 15 years of exp and code to go back to so when i need a rutine to do something odds are have already done it once before or i have some peice of code that i can modify to do what i need. Bottom line the brain does work better when younger. I had a fortran pro. in collage tell me the this ther are to kinds of programes. Coders and programers. Coders are just that they can right code but could not figure out how to get out of a box with 3 sides missing. Programmers are the ones you give the problem to sole to.
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
all the jobs aren't going to india
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Is that coder age groups seem to work such that younger coders are faster, but older coders make fewer mistakes, and the code by the younger coders is rarely better.
That is to say, since the older coders have more experience to consider, it takes them longer to just bang stuff out, but since it is colored by experience they know not to make mistakes that the younger coders will not see coming.
So if you slap a younger coder on something that's just pure code-monkey work, they'll be able to get the code out faster, but if you put them on anything that actually requires any degree of consideration you'll be far, far more likely to just wind up with a situation where you get the code really really quickly but then spend so long in debugging you wind up in the end spending more time than you would have had you just gone with the older, "tortoise" programmer. It seems to me it would make sense to try to hire both types of programmers, and assign them tasks appropriate to their speed/thoughtfulness level..
I have no idea what happens if you tailor the process to ensure that the impact of the mistakes done by the younger coder is minimized (like require exhaustive compile-time unit tests so that where the error occurs is known immediately, or something).
Now, of course, when people say "old coders" vs "young coders" they seem to mostly be talking about, like, *real* age differences. The idea there could be a noticeable speed difference between a 32 year old and a 25 year old, it seems to me, is just kind of silly.
- super ugly ultraman
Ageism is present in every "trendy" job. ;-)
The only way to fight this is by quitting and writing (anonymously) a similar open source project like that what you'd write in the firm. Then watch it goin' down...
When available at a price within budget, a qualified person with maturity will get the job at a company worth working for. Why? Because every survey shows older workers are more loyal, more stable, and more willing to commit. I was at the hiring end for 10 years, and I endorse this point of view. When youthful energy is needed, hire on a contract basis, then get them out the door. Between the ages of 20 and 30, most intelligent people are looking for the very best gig they can find, which means they'll dump you in a second if need be. The older worker typically is not quite so quick to move, and gives you all the other premium character traits one associates with maturity to boot.
Fear not.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
When I was fresh out of college (a little while back) I ran into something related. My boss definitely preferred me for the fact I was youngest and he probably perceived my general energy as also being faster at programming. But I also ran into another problem. Here's an example:
It's a late Friday afternoon and we've got plenty to do, but with plenty of time. The boss tells me he wants the work done for Monday morning instead of the extra week we were originally told we had. The older developers with families told him they weren't staying late Friday, they were going home. I told him the same, but he replies, "Why? You don't have anything better to do." Apparently since I was young and didn't have any family I had no reason not to work more. I was fuming and I didn't work late. He tried to pull that crap a few more times after that.
So not only are younger minds quicker, but apparently they're also easier to manipulate and take advantage of.
Developers: We can use your help.
I think another reason younger programmers are sometimes desirable is that they are seen to be more enthusiastic with what they are doing than older programmers. Someone really enjoying what they are doing can possibly be more likely to innovate. At least theoretically.
Somebody who is young and inexperienced but dedicated may be able to crank out a lot of code quickly, but at least in my field, (embedded systems) there is no substitute for having seen and solved a wide variety of problems. You gain a much better feel for what is the best approach to solving a problem, and how long it will take.
Would you really trust a 16 year old to code and deliver a critical app?
My rights don't need management.
When those young, fast and inexperienced coders give them brittle, unmaintainable code that soon collapses under it's own weight, they will call in us old seasoned consultants to fix the problems at a premium price.
A manager that can't distinguish quality of work from quantity has no business making hiring decisions in this industry.
Disclaimer:
What precedes is not meant to reflect generally on young programmers. There are both brilliant and useless coders at all ages.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
This is another indicator that Generation X and the Baby Boomers are spineless for the most part. Why let a bunch of 20 year olds walk all over you? Back in the good 'ol days, 20 year olds were sent off to fight wars and die by the 35 and 50 year olds. Now the 20 year olds are calling the shots.
Good for my generation, bad for humanity.
Please IT grandpas, get a spine!
Why slashdot? Why not?
The best programmers are the older ones who actually matured.
First of all, a younger programmer works for a lot less than an older experienced one. He may not put out the best code, but does it really matter to an IT manager ?
These days the buzz word is "COST CUTTING", so if you have a decent enough Sales and marketing dept. which can BS their way to customers and be successful in selling semi functional, bloatware then "WHY BOTHER with experienced programmers ?"
Get some fresh out of college newbie to work for you at a very cheap cost and PROFIT!!!
We olderprogrammers ( I myself am only 27 but i guess that's old in computing age), have to realise that IT products like any other products are not about quality or experience, rather its about sales and marketing BS.
Haven't you learnt anything from terms like "Enterprize", "fault-tolerent","B2B", "Scalability". These are the terms that sell an IT product not the well engeniered code.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Programmers are just pissed off by this because programming is a fairly new profession -- until recently, there haven't been very large numbers of older programmers around. In short: deal with it, people.
Sure some kids may beat you our of a coding job, but thats why you should apply for jobs "higher up the ladder" so to speak.
It may not be as fun as coding, but I'm talking about the project manager type jobs, where experience _is_ more imporntant than anything else, and it's one job that someone straight out of college couldn't do as well as someone who has been around for a while.
Senior members are far more respected in the field of law, because it is understood that the older a lawyer gets, the more experience they have; concordantly, the more experience they have, the better a lawyer they are.
What does a lawyer do? Pretty much the same thing as a programmer. A good, experienced lawyer will have a specialty area of law, but be able to learn about new legal arenas as the need arises; likewise, an experienced lawyer will know the ins-and-outs of a specific arena in the legal system, including exceptions and loopholes a younger, less experienced lawyer might miss.
Same goes for programmers. An older programmer, generally speaking, will be more sensitive to over-using resources, will have a better grasp of programming methodologies, and will know about many more former bugs and programming mishaps than a fresh-out-of-college CS grad.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
As I get older I find that I am less able to code at the same pase that I did 5 years ago. But the quality of my coding has improved and I am able to produce out far more optimised and stable code then I did when I was younger. Experience has its advantages. Comparing the real time of coding is more important. Before I would spend 40 hours coding and 80 hours debugging. Now I do 65 hours coding and 8 hours debugging. As my experience increases I learned to take the speed down while coding and carefully work out the problem and make sure it workes well. While I was younger I would Code to get it working then try to put in patches to fix any bugs (which sometimes required a rewrite). Depending on the job and its needs I would use different languages to get the job done. Usually when time to code is an issue I normally write Python. While speed of the appication is the issue I would go to C or C++. If you are ranking your programming skills on Lines per Day then go ahead and higher a young whipper snapper. But if you want a good solid application hire the skilled and matured programmer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A lot of employers understand the benefits of hiring a both young-ens and middle-aged coding vets. While you get experience and quality from the older crowd, they often fall into their own narrow-minded framework. The benefits to hiring fresh-outs is the great wealth of enthusiasm and open-mindedness they offer. The two age groups can work together to produce some very impressive results.
Kudos to you, my good man.
Upon seeing my age (early twenties at the time), some of my new co-workers demanded another copy of my resume (presumably, to actually read it the second time around).
I've gone through many, um, exercises where my ideas were ferverently doubted and/or ignored because of my age, and I've had to put in extra time to provide proof-of-concept where it normally shouldn't have been necessary to demonstrate. In general, I've had to be very persistent in proving my ideas and backing my claims to a much greater degree than my older colleagues, even if it's clear that I have seniority in the position.
So it goes both ways :)
I've been in the consulting world since I was 22 (started working in IT when I turned 20). I'm now 27 and I find that age-ism is the worst form of discrimination, especially among consulting clients. Since I have a well-established beard, I usually pass for 35 and that seems to give my clients the impression that I'm better qualified than one of my peers, who is exactly at the same point in his career. All of my bosses during my consulting career have always told me never to tell my true age to the clients for fear of losing business. This is especially true since the dot-com bust when all of the "young dot-commers were shown to be the frauds they are." This deception sickens me, but I have truly seen a huge difference in terms of instant credibility and career progression when people think that I'm significantly older than I actually am. (I'm starting to get a few gray hairs, so most people now think I'm in my late 30's-early 40's. Also, I got married young and have 2 kids and this reinforces their beliefs.)
I guess the whole point of my commentary on my situation is that people do discriminate based on age and you can either play along and help yourself out (and sell out in the process) or show your true self to the detriment of your career (and possibly of your consulting company's, if you're in my shoes.) That may not be politically correct, but it's the way of the world. Also, I think that it's not as bad to play along with the game to your benefit, as long as you yourself don't start judging people based on age, picking up the habits of those around you.
Why do I h8 apple?
I think it is all relative, and in these times it could come down to the bottom line. Someone with 10 years experience is going to cost more than someone with 3. The risk may be worth it. We are just experiencing this now because over the last 10 years, there weren't too many "old" programmers out there, we were all relatively the same age. Now there is definitely an age gap.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
At least, in the long run.
Wisdom is something you can't learn in a book, can't pick up in a classroom. Both things ADD to wisdom, but they don't ad up to the sum of the whole.
Time and experience and wisdom beat out shear knowledge
At least this is what I keep telling myself as I grow older and older.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
My managers in the past have prefered young programmers because, almost without exception, they want stuff written in pretend languages like VB not a _real_ language like C or Cobol that a more experienced programmer may choose for any given job. (I once saw one specifiy VB on Windows for a computational algorythm that would take about a week to run with their set of data.)
There seems to be a lot less tolerance of genuine hackers who can write clean optimised code at the cost of non-understanding by a few suits (who as a rule seem to be older, but the young ones get hit by this crap too) than there used to be.
Ah well, what they don't know won't hurt them, and you can call C from Labview...
"Hey boss! I found a new COTS tool that is easy to understand and will save us money..."
Beep beep.
Of course, this behavior could be explained away as economic concerns, as the decision to higher younger (and typically cheaper) employees can directly affect the bottom line.
I am outraged that the widespread discrimination against short folks has taken another, worrying, twist: even in evaluating programming skills!
Sigged!
I dunno, I'm a young IT guy (early 20s) with no real experience, and I couldn't get a job if I worked for free. It's been my experience that the older, more experienced workers are having trouble finding work, and are taking the entry level jobs that I would go for, because they need to feed the family. I think they do value youth but they value experience a lot more, and probably go for a balance of both.
Then again, it could just be that I'm a horrible interview. McDonalds, here I come.
Most 35 year-olds have a spouse and kids. Most 25 year olds do not. Which is going to be able to work 70 hour weeks and focus?
Not saying it's right, however.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Well after the lawsuits from those you layoff...
But seriously, that is a whole new can of worms. But you do raise a big issue - is the real issue with ageism just a way to have cheaper labor. Then again, we are still just talking what I mentioned in my other message - if you are willing to sacrifice quality workers for things like lower wage staff, hiring your friends and having a staff that is more in your age bracket, ultimately you are just hurting your own business.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Form a team of experienced guys (the A Team) and consult out to all the companies that hire kids to code. Charge top rates, work less, be happy setting out what has to be done and letting the kids do the typing.
I'm 19 with 3 years of corporate IT experience. Soon, your job will be mine.
What is the youngest you can be before some PHB declares you fit for the scrap-heap? Players hand book? o, too much D&D :)
Is it me, or was this posting directly taken from another story? Not like recycling good posts has never been done before, but this is fairly blatant.
Yeah, imagine THAT as a slashdot topic of conversation in 5 years... What's next? Slashdot talk of sex and porn?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
My best employees are over fifty. My worst are in their twenties. 'Nuff said.
irb(main):001:0>
The older you get the more you are likely to favor things which you've already experienced. Familiar things, while familiar, tend to not allow you to expand your mind in new ways. Yes, neurons grow faster in younger people, however scholarly old men can tell you that a mindset appropriate to intellectual growth can sustain a lifestyle of constant improvement.
Many make the choice to simply not improve in any dramatic way due to the belief that trying many different things is a childish trait of chasing fads. Whereas constantly new stimulus is very important for keeping the mind sharp.
The mind is a tool, use it as you will. And if you don't, don't be suprised that it doesn't seem to be working like it use to.
An IT director/manager or HR manager should be concerned with hiring the best person for the job, period. If that person happens to be 14, 24, or 64, so be it.
That being said, the comment that this guy wants to hire younger coders, admins, whatever, shouldn't necessarily be dismissed as ageism. Younger people are certainly less experienced, but they may bring fresh ideas with them when they are hired, which can only help to promote creativity and innovation among everyone, including the more senior members of the IT team.
If, as an IT director, you feel that your department is suffering from the same kinds of solutions from the same types of people, than perhaps biasing your searches to younger candidates isn't necessarily a bad idea. Same idea applies if you have a primarily YOUNG workforce - it may be time to get an experienced member on the team.
In the discussion of a mass-resignation last week, one /. poster made the critical comment, "Be professional, always. Carry your reputation like the valuable asset it is."
This can be extended. Always work for and with professionals. Hiring young as a policy is unprofessional, and not someone you want to work for at any age. (Imagine if you get hired at 30, and work for this guy for four years. Do you get fired for being too old?)
The best part of all of this professionalism is thus: If you are highly skilled at your job, polished, and professional, then you may lose out on jobs to less experienced (but cheaper) people, but you will be at the very top of the list for skilled jobs overseen by intelligent managers who recognise that programming speed ain't everything. In other words, you will be first in line for the jobs you actually want.
Ageism? Yeah, it exists but only as a symptom of idiots you don't want to work for.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
My intuition tells me that people looking to hire programmers for mission-critical applications (database, infrastructure, medical, etc.) are going to be far more interested in older, more experienced programmers than game companies or in-house applications.
:)
A young programmer might be cheaper, might have more energy and drive, and might in fact produce more code -- but they may not produce the right code for the task. If your requirements are to bang out a rendering engine so you can get your game to market before BubbaSoft, then you want cheap programmers who are desperate/naieve enough to work 90 hours a week, and if they make a few mistakes so you can see through the corners, or your weapon can be slighly embedded in a wall texture... it can be fixed in a patch, noone will care.
OTOH, if you're looking to upgrade the medical database that's been running on a VAX for 30 years, and you really need to move it to a linux/oracle system before your VMS tape gets eaten by mice... you might want someone who's been doing this for a while so the mistakes they make are less likely to cost you 5 years of records.
I'm 34 myself, and I remember the stuff I wrote when I was 24. Yes, I churned out a bit more code, but boy was it ugly by comparison. What managers should remember is that programming is like writing, or composing... the more experience you have, the more elegant solutions you can find, and the more naturally you can express them. Young people don't worry about things like maintainability, or how some other fellow is going to figure out what they did. Some do, but most don't.
Of course, that's my opinion, and being an Old Fart (TM), I might just be biased.... or maybe I just can't remember it right...
I actually find current trends to be the opposite of what most people seem to be noticing. As a young professional, I often find myself losing jobs to older people with more experience, not necessarily because they are more qualified. Rather, someone with 20 years more experience than me with mortgage and car payments, a family to support, kids in college, etc will be a lot more likely to accept the same position they are [over]qualified for for a lot less money. Of course when the economy turns around and more senior level positions become available, they'll be gone in a heartbeat. It's just too bad most companies don't take this into consideration.
Why hire young?
Younger IT workers will often put in absurd unpaid overtime, where most older workers won't.
Younger workers just out of college will often take a job at a low salary for the experience. Older workers won't.
Younger workers are often have more exposure to cutting edge tech than older workers who cut their teeth on cobol, jcl and basic.
Younger workers have lower expectations about benefits, perks, salary, etc than older workers who can remember the 'good old days' of 5 years ago.
Older workers are more likely to have children, families, in short lives. Younger workers are more likely to drop everything and fix that server at 3:00 AM.
Older workers have seen many managers pull many tricks, know how to spot them and how to deal with them. Younger workers are generally more pliable.
=brian
You don't want to work at a company where managers are this stupid. I haven't noticed any hiring problems for older programmers at my company. This might be because some of our older guys (some in their 50â(TM)s) are also some of our best programmers. I know that whenever I interview a potential programmer, I look for in depth knowledge about at least one topic in programming, not their age, sex, or race. I assume that if a person knows something in depth, then they can learn what we need them to know.
Sounds like ageism might not be the only problem this hiring manager has...
Grammar good...FIRE BAD!!!!
Toodle pip.
I am under no delusion that I can expect to still be employed as a programmer by the time I'm 40 (28 now). If I can't make management or progress some other way, then my fall back saving up enough money to start my own business.
Young guys might hear a response that they are too young, old might hear that they are too old. I heard in one of my interviews that I not enough engineering oriented (I've graduated from computer engineering and happen to have "Eng." title on my card). All of that is just a cover. ;-) If they are intelligent, they will invent an excuse like "ageism".
"Your resume gets 15 seconds and you get 90 seconds to make impression". There was a recent discussion on Slashdot that it actually takes less than that. Personally, I agree with that. Quite often it takes just a glance to get an impression that will impact a relationship with a person. What they say later, it usually just confirms the impression. Excuse that you are not hired because you are too young or too old is just an excuse. The manager you interviewed with might not be able to pinpoint why exactly they decided this way or the other. Scott Adams has a few books on that, too.
iThink iHate iMod
With the top 5% of this years graduating class of 3 million Computer Scientists in India struggling to get US$6000 a year, I'm surprised that this is even an issue!
I work with people that are older who think they should get a free ride because they built the system (3+ versions ago) and DOS / Clipper is a great combo.
Age doesn't matter as much as staying on top of what's out there and what's coming down the pipe.
Who moved my cheese applies to almost everyone I work with on a daily basis.
Some of the bad thing that older engineers are guilty of (and please do not flame, I know I am generalizing):
Now for the handfull that feel offended by what I just said (and can back that up):
Study finds older topics replaced by younger topics...more to come.
Younger people are also more in-tune with current technology.
I am 21, and I spend a lot of my time at work explaining very basic skills to people not much older than me.
Today I : Showed somebody how to use the "Paste Special" features in Office XP, showed somebody else how to autofill MS Excel cells, and explained what PHP was to my webmaster. Yes, my webmaster.
Older people (I know...30 isn't old, but bear with me) just either don't get it, or haven't learned about it.
But along with that, it is also a generational gap - because most people over 25 haven't used Instant Messaging, and therefore don't see its vast potential. They see it as just chatting, and useless, while they wait for hours as emails are read and replied to. I have instant gratification over IM
Yes, younger people will work for less, especially in this economy, but the lack of knowledge definitely shows on those old-timers.
If you are >30 and your primary role is a programmer then it is clear that your career is going nowhere. By the mid to late 20s the serious software professional should be taking a team lead role. Shortly afterwards a project or team management position is the norm.
If you hire a 30+ programmer, you know you're hiring either a slow developer or someone who is just downright inept/ineffectual. Basically someone who's career is going nowhere. If you hire an early 20s programmer, at least that won't necessarily be the case.
When I have to hire someone, the first thing I ask myself is "Would I be comfortable spending 8-10 hours a day in the same room as this person"? When I find out they basically have no ambition, drive, and is happy to just stagnate until retirement, then the answer is a resounding NO!
1) Hire teenage programmers who will put out 5,000 lines of code every 60 hour week
2) Sell resulting error-laden bloatware
3) ???
4) PROFIT!
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
I went through the same thing a few years ago when meeting with the CEO of a private company. I was going for the Director of Development position, reporting to the COO. During the interview, the subject of work hours came up and how I would ensure that I could keep the hardware and software staff engaged and productive during the (expected) 60-plus hour weeks. Rather than answer the question, I mentioned how unproductive I felt extended overtime was to a development staff and how it led to burnout and turnover. It was something I had experienced first hand at the company I was working for at the time (where we eventually lost 10 out of 14 developers during a nine month stint of 70-90 hour weeks). His response was very close to: âYoung people donâ(TM)t have that problem. Get them fresh out of college, or before. They donâ(TM)t have families. They can work all night if needed. Older people arenâ(TM)t cut out for the software development environment anymore.â I was 32 at the time and, looking back on it, hadnâ(TM)t begun to peak on my output from a managerial or development standpoint.
The job was great. It was 3 miles from home, paid six figures and dealt with cool technology. My wife was pressuring me to take their first offer but they never called back. I heard indirectly that I wasnâ(TM)t aggressive enough for the job they had in mind. I drive passt that place every day on my way to my new job. I donâ(TM)t regret what happened in that interview whatsoever.
public void karmaWhore(String url){addSlashdotComment(fetchContent(url));}
I've spent four months working for a client. Their previous programmer was a college student who worked on the cheap and programmed their app over a summer. Then he vanished, and left behind a gruesome, tangled, undocumented mess, which they've spent thousands and thousands of dollars 'keeping up' with consultants who actually started to avoid taking their work because they didn't want to touch it.
;)) eyes.
I came in and replaced it whole; I was neither fast, nor cheap, but everything works as it should. The application is now far faster, far easier for follow for another consultant, and far more extendable and interoperable. And I won't disappear when they need support for it because I change careers or need to go back to school.
Now, I was partial to younger people myself, but that tended to be because the older people I was encountering:
(1) Were totally ignorant of new technology. When you're apply for a job coding C, C++, Java, etc, I really couldn't care how good you were with COBOL. Seriously.
(2) Had know-it-all-attitudes. We had enough young know it alls without older knowitalls -- especially ones that didn't. Hint: don't let your insecurity cause you to try to hide what ignorance you DO have with arrogance. That doesn't help.
(3) Were slow. Drink a lot of caffeine before you interview or something. If a company is fast-paced, people hiring want to see it. I would never judge on age, but the older candidates did often come in, and their stories were punctuated with long sighs, and they leisurely crossed their legs and gestured softly and made me feel like they felt they had seen it all before and were beyond it. Denied. If you've got energy, show it. Get excited. Just because you're 30, 40, or more doesn't mean you can't look at something new with a child's (or a 21 year olds, if there's a difference
Despite this generality, we did hire some of the older crowd; but they got paid more and did less than the younger generation. However, I was glad to have them around. They were great at putting on smaller tasks that required meticulous precision with good documentation -- in other words, if they lacked in speed, they gained in wisdom.
That said, I think the wave of the future in tech is contract-to-hire. It's better for employers (weed out the cruft) AND for employees (you get to prove your worth BEFORE they offer you money, so they're more likely to pay you want you deman than let you go). And with that sort of arrangement, the proof is in the pudding.
Beware the young, hot shot, Qbasic programmer!
Other than stocking up on hair dye and botox, what steps can I take to prepare for the future?
:)
Incriminating photos of your manager(s). You should be able to keep you jobs as long as he/she does.
I hate to say it but it's bang for buck. I hire as well as code and if I had the choice I would hire experienced old hands. However I can get younger coders much cheaper and with some good guidance they can be more productive per dollar (actually pound). Older coders tend to cost more. If they don't then it's a level playing field.
----
"The cuter techs kind of went off from the older sysadmins, because we're younger, and we're cuter, we've got better bodies to code faster, and for some reason, that's, like, a huge issue with older people." - Heidi Strobel, Sweetheart of IT
[old codger mode]
Bah! All the reason to round up all those teen hacker deviant hooligans and keep them from taking our jobs, Jon Katz be damned!
[/old codger mode]
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
I've thought long and hard about this issue. The problem is not one of age. It's that of experience and familiarity with the latest technology/buzzwords. IN a college environment, students have the chance to play around with projects and to learn about their discipline full time. And if their degree plan is any good, they are probably learning concepts and languages which are not tied to any one proprietor. Midcareer professionals, on the other hand, basically are too busy to learn. Sure, they learn interesting things for the tasks specific to the job at hand, but that knowledge can be very domain-specific and not easily transferable to other companies. As for me, I am madly learning about new technologies, but my schedule and commitments limit me to only part time learning. When a part time learner competes against a full time learner, there is really no contest.
If you had a 40 year programmer, gave him 2 years to go to school full time, (paid for by parents) and use of the university's great network, there would be no difference between the older and younger candidate. Having full time to learn at college provides an undeniable boost to any learner's marketability, old or young.
Another thought. HR and recruiters use the "Must have 5 years experience" rule where they won't consider candidates with less than 5 years experience. I actually wrote an essay about the "Must-have-5-years-experience fallacy," but actually this fallacy works in favor of older workers.
So what is grandpa complaining about?
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
This article is not all that surprising. If you think about how many companies continually choose the cheaper option (whether it is people or building leases), then this makes total sense. In my experience there have been *very* few managers that really understand how to run an IT group. If the financial industry did this, then mutual funds would be run by people right out of school. Instead, they hire smart, *experienced* people to run them, so they don't make stupid mistakes.
Have you ever worked for an IT group that did not make stupid mistakes? I did once, and it was fantastic. Email servers never crashed, and file shares were always available. The network never crashed either - and this was for a fortune 100 company in 1995!
As I said, IT managers do not understand that it is much, much better to hire experience people, and put the money into them, than it is to hire several cheap resources on which to build an information infrastructure. Good IT groups put their time, effort, and money into planning, and good planning takes knowledge. Of course, knowledge only comes with experience, not from being a teenager.
(In interest of full disclosure, I am an Architecture Manager for a large company, and I'm 33 years young.)
Exactly. I agree, "older = more expensive" is almost universally true. The only IT-unique perspective here may be some lingering "older people don't know computers" thing, but as said by someone else, this is likely because the baby boomers (ie, gen W) didn't grow up with them. And who can really blame employers that much for hiring younger people? These days, professionals don't typically have kids until 30. So, if I get a 22 yr old straight from college, I get someone who is healthy (cheap health plan), probably unmarried (no spousal benefits), and likely has no kids (no health benefits and such for the kids). Also, this person is likely more willing to work overtime, not having the aforementioned family to spend time with, comes for a cheaper salary, and won't be retiring anytime soon. So, clearly, there are enormous reasons to do what is not always legal, ie to practice age discrimination. Naturally, this person is likely less experienced , but if we're talking a low-level or entry-level position, employers don't care. Also, there's a good chance the younger coder will code in modern languages more "natively" - I learned non-OOP Pascal in my CS classes, and learning OOP C++ proved to be, conceptually, nontrivial for me. So, all together, there are some very compelling reasons for companies to hire younger coders. Some of them are shortsighted perhaps, but I wouldn't exactly expect it to change.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'd be part of the younger crowd here at slashdot, but I have no intention of getting a job programming, just because I don't enjoy it. My dad is a Lotus Notes guru, though, so I've seen how the industry's been going. Anyway, if a younger person has the same skills an older one does, the younger guy will usually get hired for reasons already mentioned. The trick for you old people is to always be learning. There's no way in hell some 18-year-old is going to get your job if you've spent the last 10 years learning new stuff, because there's no way in hell they'll know what you know.
You were writing real-world mission critical apps at 9? Doubtful.
.Net Experience". Bullshit.
Maybe you were writing
10 " loves "
20 goto 10
Saying you have 11 years experience programming is like the applications on Monster.com that say "8 Years
Also, managers age as they get up the ranks, and have kids of their own. This process is rich with learning how to coerce, distract, convince, herd, cajole, and generally direct the behavior of both children and younger coworkers.
At successful companies I've worked at, though, when a project is absolutely critical to the company revenue stream, ageism either vanishes or even gets partially reverted. When lots of money is involved, nobody gives a flying fuck whether you are a teenager or an old fart. If you can do the work quickly, efficiently, and above all correctly, the job is yours.
I think the term "developer" says more about what qualities you should be looking for in an employee than does "coder". In large, mission-critical projects, you don't want someone that is able to crank out thousands of lines of code per day, but someone who sees both the big picture and the details. Someone who has broad experience, has done sysadmin, network admin, assembly, higher level languages, design, testing, debugging, redesign, refactoring ... and still lives and breathes for his profession. Someone who started programming at an early age, has 10+ years of experience, and still has a passion for his work, is IMHO the best developer.
"And you are dying so slowly, you believe to be living" - Bertrand Besigye
Its not ageism. Its Westernism.
The companies want to fire all the expensive western coders and hire cheaper 3rd world coders.
Makes good business sense to me.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I've done my share of interviewing candidates for various positions in software and web development.
It has been my general feeling that younger folks interviewing at "older" posiitons frequently know more than the other, age appropriate, candidates.
When I say "know" I am most likely talking ability to work in more rigorous environments.
Younger developers tend to understand that they don't know everything (or sometimes, think they know absolutely everything, but you can weed them out) and go out and learn in their spare time.
Most of the older developers I've worked with have been quite stuck in their ways. They like to use the software they've used, the methodologies they've used, and sometimes older codebases they've repurposed from language release to language release.
The people that I've hired haven't always been younger, and haven't always been cheaper. However when it comes to hiring younger, price traditionally has not been my deciding factor.
I think coding is definitely a life-long learning experience. What you think about your year-1 code at year-2 is always "what trash." Always. Same for you at year three when looking at year two. Lather, rinse, repeat. And it's true because you're always refining your art.
A good analogy, IMO, would be just about any other "art." Do you want a first-year apprentice repairing your shoes? Sure, I guess, if speed is your goal. If you want it done right, you might want his boss with 20 years under his belt.
So why are they opting for the first-year apprentice? Well, who expects to be employed at a company ten or twenty years from now? Quality takes time to become obvious. Why should they shell out the extra money (time is money) for something that won't be obvious until after they've gone? They have a bottom line to meet and whether or not they're there in six months -- nevermind as many years -- is whether or not their numbers are lower than anyone elses. Investors are a fickle lot.
This trend is nothing more than the fallout of a society that no longer has it's citizens displaying one, two, maybe three companies on their resume. It is short-sightedness and I'm afraid there isn't anything you can really do about it.
My
Limekiller
And for all of you programming divas just realize that programming isn't a "god given talent" and neither is piano. You simply put in the work, do what you love, and good things come from it.
It does seem to me that the inherent "talent" in a person for computer science is nothing more or less than how much that person does love what they're doing. If they honestly and truly enjoy it, everything else that you would normally call 'talent' just kind of happens as a natural consequence from that..
I knew I was behind the curve, starting formal school at 26, but this is depressing. My instructors say encouraging things like "As long as you are good at what you do, you'll do alright" and "You'll be old enough to be a perfectionist and not look arogant." But what do people like me say when we are interviewed with a critical eye looking at our age as an eliminating factor? What is the best counter-attack for this?
xxxxxxxxxx
It's your mess. YOU clean it up!
I once worked in an IT department with around 1,000 people. They wouldn't hire the "youngsters", the youngest person there was about 26. In fact, a good number of people were over 40.
I guess it's sort of the opposite of what you were complaining about. : )
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Reading up on the IT industry, most recently in the Economist, I would have to say that that decision would kill the company.
"Wow, he thought hard about that one," you say, but I am actually refering to the belief that the sector is becoming a commodity. The industry is maturing and users want quality more and more over new-fangled products that mess up all the time. As programs and hardware get faster and faster, they are over-reaching the public's willingness to spend for speed. Instead, we are happy with an old 1 gig processor, but will pay for smart and well written programs.
So basically, if the management wants inexperienced programers, let them. They're sure to put out bad software that fails. Then these programmers will be back on the streets looking for another job, while you have found a company that excels.
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
It's all about the money. The truth is that younger workers will work for less. And that's all the hiring managers care about. Why pay ten coders a decent living wage when you can hire twenty kids for starvation wages? Who cares if the product is full of bugs? We'll fix that in the 1.1 release!
Youngin's can pick things up quicker in areas where older people have no experience, but they also tend to make grander and more damaging errors due to their lack of experience.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I was RIF'd in May 2001 just after the dot-bomb collapse, and was unable to even secure an interview. In the two years that followed, I netted only two interviews although I have over twenty years in programming. I know this had a lot to do with my age, since it was communicated to me through recruiters and other sources that longevity in the field directly translates into dollars. They see that hiring younger necessarilly means hiring cheaper.
Read the paper - it's all in there.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
They make damned sure they do it before you turn 40. After that, you can sue them for age discrimation under (US) federal law. Some prominent companies have found themselves paying people they laid off or never even hired in the first place, thanks to some PHB forgetting about this. Certain lawyers get rich coaching companies on how to avoid creating the wrong paper trail--errr, how to follow legal hiring practices.
I'm a programmer. Or a software engineer. Whatever. (I prefer hacker, but not all potential employers will appreciate what I mean by it.)
I understand one place where the ageism comes from.
The specific example cited above is just stupid, but there is a reasonable reason to prefer younger techies.
Remember Sturgen's Law, 90% of everything crap. This includes techies. Sure, you may work at some company that only hires smart techies who care about their work. But many companies (especially larger companies) are stuck with what they can get. If you need 200 programmers to write insurance and banking application, chances are that many of them are going to suck. Some are actually bad. Some want to be good, but need time to get there. Some just don't care.
As a result, you take steps to make the most use of these crappy techies. This is part of the reason that some companies have overly complex planning, design, and revision systems. Sure, it prevents a truly skilled and inspired person from being really efficient, but they can help keep those people not so blessed on track and getting work down (however slowly). (By way of an example, a friend complained that he was on a project to do some file conversions. It would take him one or two weeks to whip it up in Perl and carefully test it. Instead there were two dozen people working on it for six months. A waste of skilled, dedicated manpower, but in the absence of someone my friend, probably the only way to get it done at all.)
Now, all that said, maybe the better solution is to fire all of the not-so-good techies and invest heavily in the skilled ones. After all, the skilled ones can often replace many less skilled ones. Ultimately this is a financial decision (which is the better payoff for investment), and I don't know the answer. Personally I would go with fewer and better techies, but I don't get to make that choice.
So, some companies, especially large ones, take steps that optimize for the non-so-good techies, even if those steps harm good ones.
Ageism is just such a case. The more general case is a refusal to hire someone who doesn't have either 5+ years of experience in the technology they'll be working with, or just graduated with education focusing on the technology. The reason, many of the not-so-good techies aren't too keen on learning new things. After all, many of them just want to do their job and coast on by. Even if trained they'll take a long, long time to get up to speed. However, if a not-so-good techie already has real experience or just graduated with that experience they start up time is (in theory) much lower. Ageism just takes the reasonable fact that many techies will not learn new tech and applies it in a very conservative way to hiring. Of course, this bones the good techies who learn quickly and like learning. It leads to silly cases where a company will spend a full year failing to hire someone with experience in FooTech instead of just hiring someone and allocating time for them to learn.
Of course, all of this is just one of the reasons for ageism. There are others. I just wanted to offer up an explaination of one on the possible reasons.
Another popular reason for ageism is that fresh college grads are used to working long hours and don't expect alot of money. In this economy they're even more desperate, I know several recent grads willing to take extremely low paid jobs to gain needed experience (Which working as a waiter or a receptionist doesn't give). Unfortunately this can lead to situations where people get burned out and knowledge leaves the industry. The lack of long term stability means fewer people are willing to enter the industry. Older employees expect to be treated like the professionals that they are, they want reasonable professional salaries and reasonable working hours (you can raise the hours, but the salary better match). I think it is often a reasonable investment, but companies are often only as smart as the dumbest link in their chain of command (thus, ageism might come from the top, or from a HR person).
Search 2010 Gen Con events
How many young managers are out there? Is it possible general views like htis exist because only a limited subset of the population (older men) is in the position to display them? Would a company with all young managers have different views?
I've only been working as a programmer for 1 year, since I graduated college, and every month or so, I find that when I look back at old code, I'm amazed at how much I've learned since then, and how much better at programming I am now. For awhile I thought my productivity was decreasing, until I realised I'm just doing more with less work, as I get better.
Right now, I'd say it would almost always be better to have experienced programmers, on the condition that they are not ste in their ways, and are open to learning. But you'll never get experienced programmers without giving new blood hte chance to learn. Perhaps the only real solution is, like alot of other things in life, a balance between the two...
...the crystal attached to the palm of my hand keeps blinking red!
I was definitely more nimble-minded when I was 21, but did I ever tell you about that stunt when I pissed off an entire management hierarchy?
Seriously, maturity is definitely an asset in a corporate environment. The problem is if your manager is too immature to realize that.
Milo
Take two programmers; one 21 year old fresh out of college, one 35 year old with 15 years of experience. Hand them a complex 6-month assignment and watch what happens.
20-year old takes what he can out of your terse project summary and starts coding right away.
35-year old takes the project summary, digests it, and starts on a design.
20-year old codes in a vaccum, not worrying too much whether or not what he's coding actually solves your business problem. Coding is cool, and it's fun, so why interrupt it with useless questions?
35-year old realizes that wasting time coding before requirements are fully specified is a sure way to fall behind schedule. He asks a lot of questions, does research on different approaches, documents his findings.
After a month, 20-year old has a slew of code that may or may not meet requirements. He understands what he's written but not how it fits into an overall architecture. You inform him he needs error logging, exception handling, internationalization support, performance metrics, patchability, maintainablity, and testability. Seeing all this boring crap that gets in the way of coding, 20-year old gets totally demotivated. Since he has no real commitments, he quits.
35-year old has a solid grasp on what is required, knows what needs to be done in the grand scheme of things, has already thought about the maintainability, internationalization, and testability. He sees a challenge ahead, he maintains a mortage and a wife and some kids, soe he's more motivated to get the job done right, and he's less likely to jump ship when things get 'dull'.
Give me the 35-year old coder with experience over the 20-year old with enthusiasm any day of the week.
Now that I'm getting on in years I think I understand the deal with "ageism", and IMHO a lot of it is tied up in how energetic one is or appears to be.
I think hiring managers ASSUME rightly or wrongly that a young person is an energetic one. A qualitative thought experiment may be in order here. Take two folks, each with exactly the same "energy level" but one is 25 and the other is 45 and have them interview for a position where age doesn't really matter (hard, I know) I imagine the interviewer would assume that the 25 year old had more energy. Just because he/she is younger.
I have seen plenty of young and non-energetic people in my time and plenty of older and very energetic people in my time. If you want a highly motivated work force one should focus on how energetic the people ARE rather than how energetic they appear to be.
Programmers, I believe are in an especially difficult trap here. I have met many programmers who's mind can do the programming job extremely well, but all other external signs of their energy levels are much harder to detect.
I second.. and third your statements. I've been working AS a (something like a) developer through college and the difference between younger and older developers is significant. Youger developers are still working out their development processes and are more prone to erroroneous and buggy code.
Older developers take longer to program because they have had the experience of developing code that is hard to revise and update.
College classes tend to teach students to develop in a "code and fix" mentality because the projects generally need to be finished over a period of weeks (days)...
The point is, regardless of what some PHB thinks, older developers are better than younger developers much like weathered veterans make better soldiers than rookies.
The central rationale for younger prorgammers tends to be that they'll have more "creative flair" or "instinct" for programming but the truth is that when programming "real" applications, the development lifecycle should be a refined and well developed process.
A final note, computer scientists (developers) are much akin to engineers. The only difference is that there is no certification or standard for what a developer is capable of (unlike the case for engineers [wait, not software engineers tho]).
Would you trust a junior engineer with a "real" engineering project? Of course not, and it shuld be the same with software developers, how many IBM fellows are under 25? How many AMD fellows are under 25?
Perhaps this stigma applies to the hiring policies of some (perhaps smaller) companies but in the end, skilled developers are probably going to have a better chance at getting and retaining development positions.
.: 2+2 = PI SQRT(1+N)
They can ask. The only problem is if they do ask, they will have to do a fancy dance to show that they didn't use the answer. If it didn't matter, why did you ask?
Fight Spammers!
In any other career, it is expected that you will move into management. Teacher? Become a principal. Lawyer? Become a partner in the firm. Doctor? Manage a department and eventually a hospital. Academic? Supervise graduate students and write grant proposals. Marine? Get promoted onto the General Staff, leave the running through the mud to the young officers. See where I'm going with this?
But "geeks" don't want to do that. "But I'm a hacker!" they say, and insist on remaining on the bottom rung of the organization. But the people on the bottom rung are the ones with the lowest pay and the least job security in any organization! But, geeks expect to have the pay and the security without taking on the responsibility that traditionally comes with it.
The answer is clear - geeks need to start taking their careers seriously and stop idolizing people like ESR. For all his skill with termcap, ESR knows nothing about Corporate America(tm) and taking advice from the Hacker's Dictionary on what to aspire to is professional suicide.
I think this is false. I have seen many of my colleagues in university learning much more than I did, yet they have never been able to attain the "algorithmic thinking" required for programming.
The reverse is true, no matter how much I studied math I could not solve things with the same apparent ease other friends did.
I think the tripe about 'young minds working faster' is a load of bollocks. They hire younger people because they can work them 80 hours a week and not have them complain about never seeing the spouse and kids. That's what it comes down to. PHB's can work young whippersnappers longer and harder because they have increased physical stamina. They can also pay them a lot less to do the same work because these kids don't have mortgages and kid's college funds to worry about.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
'Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill'
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
The shop I'm at now has a surprisingly older crowd of coders. They also have a distinct policy against hiring anyone without experience.
I have no doubt (having seen it in interviews myself recently) that there is a trend towards hiring younger staff, fresher faces, cheaper assets/liabilities. But no all shops are like this.
For the most part, I've found that places that were hit fairly hard in the past two years but are coming back, are more likely to hire experience and not just warm bodies. Your skills will come into it when they realize they don't have time to train the younger crowd.
I'm 32 now and sitting somewhere in the middle between older and wiser, and younger and faster. I'm just hoping I don't have to wind up in the market looking for a job anytime soon.
cheers
I started at a very young age too, somewhere around 7-9. I won't say I have 10 years C/C++ experience, but I will say I have 12 years computer experience.
Make sure you have recent credentials in state-of-the-art technology. I'm a 49-year old programmer, and since I work for a sub-contracting firm, my resume is out there all the time. I'm consistently able to find work.
Maybe it's the breadth of my experience. Maybe I've acquire a reputation for good work. But I believe it's my certifications: Java 2 programmer, Java 2 Developer, OOAD from IBM, Advanced ColdFusion Developer. I also have experience in the tools that drive distributed applications: J2EE, CORBA, WebSphere, SilverStream, IDEA, Ant, CVS. I think the managers look at me as someone who will provide some maturity and stability to their crew of bright but impulsive and inexperienced young coders.
In the "job skills" section of my resume, right up at the top, I list my top skill as "learning" -- stressing not what I've done, but what I can learn to do!
Look folks, as long as nobody cares about software quality, then it's always going to be better to hire a bunch of young hacks than more experienced programmers. Why waste money on people who have learned from experience when nobody buying your product cares. Hire a team of people who will work 60 hours a week for chump change and some options, hire one experienced architect to design, and then let them loose.
Sure, it won't be flawless software, but who will notice?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Today there are 8 year olds making happy meal toys for the latest Disney flick promotion for pennies a day. Tomorrow they will be banging out Java code on some crappy hardware 1 step up the econommic ladder from the 6 year olds out back getting toxified smelting the machines that actually don't work for scrap. One needs to distinguish themself to demand more pay. Articulate why your work is not grunt work that can go to the cheapest resources and you have real job security. There is always someone out there willing to work cheaper. There is only one that delivers the most value.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
There are two main cases for such agism in my observation.
The first is a focus on superficial metrics. The manager probably does not have a clue about what good software is. Thus, they measure productivity in lines of code or number of screens per day. For a new project, I agree that a kid might be a bit faster in getting it up and working. However, it will probably be harder to maintain in the longer term. Making code serviceable over the longer term is something that experience definitely helps with. You have to go through the ringer of experiencing change to learn how it impacts code and business. A newbie won't have that under their belt.
But, the hiring manager would probably not recognize serviceable code if it bit them in the ass. In other words, the metrics that are easier to measure favor the youngsters. But, metrics that are easiest to measure are not always the most important. Most shops spend at least as much time and money on maintenance as initial creation. Not all managers are like this, but enough of them are.
The second is that hiring managers *expect* that you will expect more money and/or more benefits, and may have a family who takes away from 60-hour-per-week coding sessions. In other words, younger workers are perceived to be more exploitable.
Table-ized A.I.
In IT terms I am an old fart. 46. But it seems like yesterday I was the kid who had to prove himself in a mainframe world full old men. I don't know where all the old men went, probably died of the cigarettes they chained smoked. I do remember a lot of old geeks, who although they lacked washboard abs (ageism is about sexual attraction not programming skill), they could code the hell out of anything in assembly language. Now I am old. I adapted to the Internet in 1993. I marvel what some kids do not know. Too many years on ritalin? And there's the bright ones. GenX got a raw deal, mostly because it hit recessions on both sides of college and the baby boomers before me want to deny them the same excesses in life we enjoyed. Hell we demanded beer at age 19! There is always someone who is a faster coder. There's always someone slower. Most of the times its about persistence against all odds and just getting the job done.
This is just an excuse to reduce payroll.
A sharp mind is a sharp mind.. period.
There's plenty 20 somethings out there that smoked so much pot that not all nuerons are firing properly, or their liver and brain are pickled to a point that they are shaking and shouting superlatives like Ozzy Ozbourne.
LOL!!
Dammit, you made my day!
Personal experience; YMMV.
I ran a consulting business out of my house for 6 years. At one point I was approached by a firm contemplating a new microcontroller design; hardware and software. In the end they went with a kid right out of college (I am 50 now, I think I got the years to say that). I think most of their motivation was monetary. Some of it may have been control: I refused to consider a full-time position with them but the college grad hired on.
About 9 months later, they called me back in. The hardware and software designs were a mess, filled with mistakes that I had learned not to make over the years. Of course, boards were made and deadlines were passed, so the changes I was allowed to make were limited. "Do whatever you have to to make it work, but don't change anything." Huh?
Well, I got it out the door, but I wasn't happy with a lot of the compromises in the design. I worked at twice the rate I originally quoted them for the project.
In the end, they paid more, got an inferior design and it took longer to hire that cheap college grad than to hire me.
When I graduated and took my first design job, I wasn't allowed to start designing mission critical stuff right away. Instead, I was partnered with an older, more experienced engineer, and my schooling really began.
I blame the increased emphasis on bottom line economics for this. The contributions of experience don't show up on a balance sheet any way except as increased salary cost. Faster development times, better product reliability and decreased maintenance are all inconspicuous because they result in savings that DON'T get added into a balance sheet
I just noticed in the linked Simpson's clip that the life preserver ring in the background has stripes on it in one shot, and none in the other, the camera man's hair changes color from brown to black, and the level of detail drawn on the camera changes between shots. All in less than 10 seconds. :)
i think the bottom line is, old people are a financial liability... they get sick, they are really close to pension, they have developed lives for themselves that often come before work... youth is wasted on the young, and wisdom is wasted on the old.
scott king
Here are a couple of interesting articles on the effects aging has on the brain.
My son and I started taking drum lessons 8 months ago - together. There is no comparison. While he may be more technical and able to do the marching snare roll, etc. I rock all over him on a kit. We both put in the same amount of practice time.
But I love the looks I get from the middle age women as I walk out of the lesson room. Which is probably the root of the problem. Most middle age folks don't think someone their age *should* be learning new skills and definitely not having fun!
Didn't we just see a story about how hard it is for a kid to get into programming nowadays? Gen-X kids grew up in the eighties with simple computers that were ideally suited for learning programming. Turn the thing on, there's the BASIC prompt. Learning to program in your formative years helps you a lot. You learn how to think (even if you have to unlearn a few things that BASIC teaches you).
My first computer was a ZX81 I built from a kit when I was 12. Which meant that my first language was BASIC and my second was Z80 assembler (since BASIC was so atrociously slow even for 1982). I would POKE the machine codes into memory, and that got so tedious I wrote a BASIC program to help me do it. It started with 10 REM AAAAAAA.... You would type the assembler instruction into a field, hit a key, and it would poke the correct values into memory starting at address 16514 (where the A's started). A bunch of my friends in school did similar stuff. The occasional kid might be into that sort of thing now, but there isn't much of an incentive to learn programming now because computers are much better now and so much good software has been written already.
I bet the stream of really good programmers entering their 20s will continue for a while and then dwindle. If you spent your time as a kid playing with a GameBoy, your mind has already calcified a bit by the time you start programming.
Having recently turned 38 and having only worked in the computer industry -- primarily as a developer -- I made a choice long ago to try and stay on the "creative" end of things. I first learned to program on an Apple II at the age of 12. It seems that the wisest approach to this is to look at the individual's capabilities; just as race, religion, etc. tell one little about an person, nor does age. Of course statistics can be applied to demonstrate a vague pattern, but would you want to work for an employer that makes decisions on such a level? It all boils down to the indivual; if he or she has talent, engergy, curiosity and all the other requisite characteristics, then that is on what the hiring decision should be made =)
Iâ(TM)m not easily baffled or daunted. Iâ(TM)m less susceptible to pressure or hype from the latest Software package, API or other doohickey that a sales droid tries to force feed me. Almost all problems are variations of oneâ(TM)s Iâ(TM)ve beaten my head against in the past. Itâ(TM)s true I wonâ(TM)t be suckered into 72 hour coding âoedeath marchesâ without a darn good reason. But thatâ(TM)s balanced by the fact that I have a pretty good handle on how long somethingâ(TM)s going to take and I can hit project milestones with ease. Itâ(TM)s also true that Iâ(TM)m less likely to keep my mouth shut if I think weâ(TM)re marching off a cliff. Most good managers think this is a âoegood thingâ [tm Martha (ainâ(TM)t bending over for the potpourri in the joint) Stewart]. I landed my last job and my current one because they wanted someone with a few scars. Iâ(TM)m not worried.
Lumping me in with the ambulance chasers. The code I write isn't nearly as convoluted as the code lawyers write, and it actually does useful work.
Now if I worked for Microsoft, the shoe might fit...
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe Better a smartass than a dumbass.
This reminds me of an urban (business) myth that I heard about in Silicon Valley circa 2000. (Who knows? Maybe it's not a myth. I'm open to discussion.) ->
Management of Company X asked marketing employee Y, a person of *****-extraction (clue: a country near China and about the same size) to move into programming, because it was their understanding that "her type" of people had traits that made them, on average, way-better-than-average programmers. Imagine what could happen if that kind of thinking becomes pervasive. I'm thinking future tense, but it's really present tense in some places, isn't it?
Probably the biggest discrepency between the young and the old as far as businesses are concerned is not capability, but benefits. Of these, health and retirement benefits are likely to cost a company hiring older people more than when hiring younger people.
As people age, they become more prone to health issues, meaning that the cost of providing health benefits is likely to be higher. This should not be a consideration for any company providing any sort of group benifit package to their employees, but all to often is of concern.
Retirement benifits when considered year to year, are more likely to cost a company more for someone who is aproaching the company's mandatory retirement age, than it is for someone who is just starting their career. This is because someone who is concerned about their retirement package (at say age 40) is going to be looking for more perks along the lines of matching funds, or even 40% match for anything over x dollers per month. Someone who is thinking age 65 is 40+ years away, is altogether too often more interested in taking home the extra couple of dollars rather than saving it for their retirement. (Which is where they should put it, take a look at the math.)
Of course it is my opinion, or rather in this case observation.
-Rusty
You never know...
You are exactly right. I do tech support. Without question, the MOST annoying calls we get are from older tech who will start off the phone conversation with, "By the way, I've been programming for over 20 years, and I think..."
My response to this is, "And how long have you been using our software, sir?"
They have the hardest time grasping that their way isn't the way something needs to be done in order for it to work in our software. They're obstinate, and that's why people don't want to hire them.
I like older programmers. You can learn a lot from them, however, for the most part, they don't feel the same about you, and this is where the problem lies.
As far as the conjecture that programming isn't a talent, in order for you to believe that, you have to believe that the mind truly is a blank slate once you are born.
All that you really need to be a good coder is a good grasp of logic. People that have set themselves up that way in life should be able to perform well when presented the task of coding.
Then you get other people, like this one guy I used to live with, who could not understand how to set up variables for x and y and add them together. Literally, 3 people tried to help him comprhend this for an hour, and left him to do it on his own, and he couldn't. He's never going to become a coder now.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I'm a lawyer. As I age, I find myself gaining an increasing (and sometimes even annoying) ability to hold more and more amounts of complex data in mind at the same time. This phenomenon has often been remarked upon as to lawyers. There are many examples of lawyers whose intellectual capacity remains sharp well into their 90s (e.g. the famous attorney Louis Nizer). Aging is generally not an impediment to the quality of practicing law.
I also dabble in a little programming (Java; VB; Perl). I slog through, but I find it extraordinarily difficult. While I can think logically as an attorney, I have a much harder time thinking with the mathematically precise and efficient logic which computer programming requires. It's never the formalisms of the computing language which trip me up, how one assigns a variable or what have you. It's more the mindset which distinguishes a good computer programmer from a poorer one. Maybe it requires simply the familiarity and experience which I don't have time for, but there seems to be an extra intellectual edge to good computer programming which is a notch above the thought-processes required to parse statutes and internalize and process reams of data from caselaw. Does anyone understand what I mean? Are computer minds different?
What's the deal with all these micks posting on Slashdot? Don't they know it's a site for sober people? Sheesh, go hang out on johnnywalker.com, mick.
Any manager who focuses solely on the salary of his programming staff is an incompetent fool who should be fired immediately.
Ask any experienced programmer where the biggest costs lies, and they'll tell you it's fixing (or worst, working around) the crap left from rushed or ill-informed decisions made earlier. This isn't just the cost of paying programmers to maintain the broken infrastructure, it's the lost opportunities as the people who know your code are prevented from working on new functionality, the delays in responding to changing demands, etc.
We all know that the marketplace often doesn't give us enough time to do things right... but a lot of mistakes can be avoided if you just have somebody on the team who has already done something similiar at an earlier job. Or arguably more importantly, somebody who has seen the same brilliant idea fail because the nasty problems don't appear until you're committed to this approach.
But I guess that's why we're told we have a "negative attitude." I've actually heard some people say that they'll never hire somebody who says something "can't be done." They make no distinction between professional knowledge (e.g., recognizing a problem as NP-complete with no known "good enough" approximations), professional experience (e.g., having worked at three other sites where the same approach was unsuccessfully attempted), or just a bad attitude.
The other cost that's often overlooked is that specialization is dangerous. You don't want to hire one person to fill a half-dozen separate positions, but having people on your staff who can cover others can be a godsend when your regular sysadmins are all away (e.g., one on vacation, the other home sick), or the DBA is on vacation, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
For what's it worth, I have noticed a slow but steady decline in certain aspects of my congitive ability, especially memory (from near photgraphic to pretty decent), ever since I turned 23, and I'm only 27. Of course, experience helps make up for the decline. Experience, in a sense, is a mnemonic device. It lets you skip the working through of problems from scratch because they have at least one known solution familiar to you. The problem is it might not be the best solution at this time and a younger mind working through the problem for the first time might see something you didn't, however, experience, on the whole, out-weighs pure ability except in extraordinary circumstances. That being said, I have been managing various IT groups since I was twenty, and I have had people tell me I'm too young, in the past, for certain positions for which I interviewed. So, the opposite kind of ageism that the post examines also happens and is the norm. This trend of ageism is more conspicuous because it actually reverses the norm. I realize what I said about experience reinforces this sterotype (that's probably why it got started), but really the best solution is an in-depth interview, not trying to judge people based on external cues. Nothing is better than engaging in conversation with a person to find out how good (s)he is relative to yourself, of course. The problem is you can't do that for every resume that you get. Ergo, baseless generalizations on age in order to save time.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=63702&cid=5923 358
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
We work predominantly, but not entirely, in Internet services. It has to run, all the time, and when it crashes, it better log something meaningful, get off its lazy ass, and get back up and working yesterday. Young kids who have little to no professional programming and development experience don't know much at all, if anything, about fault tolerance and high availability. Nor do they usually fully grasp the importance of error checking and reporting, defensive practices like design-by-contract, CM, QA, etc. I want folks with battle scars. Occasionally you find a youngin' who's dealt with that already, and they work out great, but most haven't.
Now that's not to say that I wouldn't hire a youngin'. I'd hire a recent college grad with at least some of the prerequisite skills and a good attitude to start off with maintenance work and small projects. For example, fix some bugs, do integration testing and explain why the bugs are bugs and what caused them. Sooner or later they can actually explain what happened and how to fix the problem, and then they're off.
As for learning ability, I, frankly, haven't noticed a real difference in the ability to learn between the young and old when it comes to languages, specs, etc. If anything, I've seen older people pick stuff up faster.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Americans over 30 won't work over 60 hours a
week and want more than 20 dollars an hour. Globalism is the solution to this
greed. We need more guest workers. Americans
must understand that they can no longer enjoy protected labor markets. The powerful will be better off and so our society will be better off with compliant labor. This is just the natural
way of things.
A friend of mine (who happens to be Welsh) is a programmer on DEC VAXen. Computers aren't even his main focus - he's more into music, standup comedy, half a dozen other interests, plus his wife and daughter of course - but he's an experienced, competent programmer in his mid-40s. After 2 years in NYC on an H1B, he's back home in the UK and has recently landed an OOP/XML programming job... he has no experience, and was up against a 20-something newly-graduated kid, but the interviewer liked his "real-world experience" and promised to train him on the newer languages...
So for the past week I've been calling him every dirty name in the book, for being such a lucky @#$*%&. Get in touch if you want to help me heap abuse on the lil' @#$*%& (steal MY dream job, will he...)
(oh, if there's a point to this, it's that you can't generalize, I guess)
Perfectly Normal Industries
There is some ageism everywhere but if at 32 one is feeling this then I ask what age are companies going to hire?
20-24 Recent Grad little work exp.
25-27 Enough exp that we dont have to train you but enough years left before you are outdated.
28-31 Why would we invest in someone who is going to be washed up in three years
32 They must work with punch cards still.
Try being 51
"However one has to wonder if the decision to go with less experienced programmers also affects software quality, in the long run"
Not really. The old ones are just as bad as the young ones. How many of the programmers you know would you consider really good?
Then again, it could just be that I'm a horrible interview. McDonalds, here I come.
Most job postings in my area requires years of experience so I believe that "hiring manager" is in the minority.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Programming and software engineering is a craft, and as such takes years to master. I'm a way better coder than I was 10 years ago, and I think I will be even better in another 10 years. It is an art to write efficient, stable, and maintainable code. Those who fail to understand that programming is a craft and who prefer to hire less experienced programmers will ultimately suffer the consequences of their poor decisions. MM
People who think this way aren't thinking. Basically what they'd rather have is a snot nosed teenager who is just learning to write programs in his highschool or freshman college programming class than an older programmer who not only has a programming degree, but also has many years of experience. No wonder today's software is turning into bug infested bloat ware.
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
There are a lot of programmers in the world, technology changes fast, and young people tend to have more of a grasp on the new stuff. I'm 38 and I know it's just a fact. The alternative is to forgoe the wisdom of your years and constantly hop onto whatever new bandwagon comes along, get good at it quickly and market yourself cheaply for a job. That's what being young is all about; bringing in the fresh and new for dirt-cheap.
If hopping on all the bandwagons appears unwise to you, you know what you do then? Go apply your more mature knowledge to your own software and peddle it yourself. That's one thing about programming that isn't true in a lot of job sectors; you can sell your own work almost as easily as you can find a job working for someone else. Take your pick: work for someone else in the technology and for the pay THEY want, or stick with what you know and work for yourself.
beat youthfull naive exuberance any day of the the week.
I ought to know, I've been coding since the sixties, consistantly employed since the seventies and earning a six figure salary since the eighties.
After years of coding, I can pick up a new language the same way a kid picks up a cold.
Sure there are companies that discrimate against older employees but there are just as many that can appreciate the consistant generation of quality code that only an older programmer, who has a finely honed sense of methodology, can bring.
but this is not a bad thing.
:) They cost less. They are flexible and they do learn fast in general. All of these can be found in older people as well.
We continue to develop new skills and adapt to the task at hand throughout life. It is this ability to adapt that makes age based decisions poor ones.
What people need to be looking for are those who show the ability to favorably adapt to their needs. Age has a lot to do with this, but it is not the core problem in my view.
The problem is simple: They are looking for people they can own.
Young people are attractive because they might be single, they can work long hours and are not sick as much. (Though the weekend bash has the potential to consume as many days as being truly sick does
What is the difference?
Younger people are naive and they *need* a good start. I don't mean to offend anyone under 30, but you are likely to be more willing to be owned to a higher degree than someone older will because you need the chance to grow and gain experience.
Personally, I have been grappling with this for a while now. (Just turned 35 --damn...)
My approach to work has not changed since I was 20. Interestingly, I am better at it now because of my experience. The chance to actually contribute is higher because I bring more to the table. But there is a growing problem from my point of view.
Terms of employment.
Employers want control and high productivity at the lowest cost. Can't blame them, that is how business is done at its basic level. They want such a high degree of control it is almost silly.
Sometimes, I think many companies are just looking to own everything they can. Get your 20 something excited and make sure your contract ownes everything he does. --Profit!
I was lucky, I have always worked for people who did not do this. They wanted to know who I was and what I could bring to the table. Ideas abound, but ownership of them is a simple question of business intent. I cannot compete with my employer, but am able to honestly discuss the issue whenever new thoughts come up with no worries. We don't need a contract because we have an honest working relationship.
Both parties are ethical and it works well.
Now I look around and am more than a little disgusted. Everyone wants a non-compete. The temps treat you like a cheap whore. Pimps --all of them!
Age discrimination? Sure. Younger people are more likely to be naive in some key way that makes them easier to control. That makes them attractive. It has little to to with ability to learn or cost or potential.
It is all about being owned. The information age has brought the ability to compete down to each one of us. The industry is responding with law and patents and god knows what else to maintain their control.
Anti company? Sure if yours is doing these things. Extremist? Maybe, but it is hard to deny what I spent many years watching happen.
Different view? Bring it on! A somewhat jaded professional who should not yet be jaded would appreciate a different point of view...
Blogging because I can...
what this means is that not only are older folks being put out of work, they're going to be faced with other changes in the years to come: higher retirement ages, lower health coverage, smaller pensions, and a greater likelihood of being fired in discriminatory fashion. Anyone who's been watching the healthcare crisis knows about what's happening with the lengthening human lifespan- where now it could be 120, it's possible it could be 150 by 2050 AD. An extra thirty years pension plan coming out of the pockets of- not the company, but the younger workers, because their income is taxed and their healthcare premiums jump and the company contribution to the 401(k) drops by 75%- in order to fund what the company has to pay out.
I have no solution to offer to this, just the obsevation that there's more than the debated power of the brain at certain ages being the deciding factor. Companies are going to have every incentive to hire cheaper workers, give lower bonuses, and outsource to foreign companies everything that they can, in the coming years.
I'm 26, and at the point where i'm realising that what i'm paying in social security and so on will probably not be there for me when i'm old enough to need it. And what's more, when i'm older the state will be demanding that i get a job when i will have almost no job prospects because of my age.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
As a 22 yr old working in info sec I see it too. I am always told that I am to young and do not have enough experience but through hard work and fighting I have proven many people wrong and have become respected by my peers (work peers and age peers). I entered with this company when I was barely 19 and have worked hard to get where I am so I understand how you feel. In my experience it helped that I was able to show my background as a black hat, though only narrowly avoiding jail time with my gH companions.
I firmly believe that age has very little to do with how "productive" and individual is. I also believe that "experience" can be both an an accelerant and a hindrance to a project.
There are several things which can upset the balance.
Experience:
Too little, and one may find themselves lost, wandering aimlessly through code trying to find the thread that caused the program to break. It can also lead to short/narrow sighted development of programs or fixes to problems that are incomplete, or break other code elsewhere. It can look good up front because the programs are written faster, but can be incomplete or inefective due to a lack of background knowledge.
On the flip side, less experience may also lead to the "Oh, I didn't know you couldn't do that, so I did it."
Too much, and one may find themselves bogged down with the "We've always done it this way" or "We've never done that before".
On the flip side, more experiece also leads one to be able to go "Oh, that's easy, go here, change this and blammo, all better". Programming may appear to go slower, but, for the most part that is because the individual is remembering all the other problems they have encountered, and is trying to make certain that none of the mistakes of the past are repeated in the future.
The two main things, imho, that lead to better programmers are attitude and aptitude.
Having the aptitude, often means that one can build images / pictures of what the code will do in their minds, and can change that picture to determine how they would want to fix a problem or find a solution, then start writing the code from that image.
It also means an often intuitive understanding of what the program is doing just by browsing the code, or rapidly scrolling through code.
Having the attitude to program, often means that one enjoys writing code, and will spend hours trying to fix the "This should be working" type of problems just so they know what the problem was, and how to avoid it in the future. (This doggedness can also be a downfall at times - ie, fixed the problem in 3 hours, when a 30 second work-around would have sufficed [8^), however, that problem will not happen again, and the code won't be full of "work-arounds" to try and decode at a later time.)
Having both the attitude and the aptitude will take someone a lot further, and farther than most anything else.
I started as a "New Kid" at age 17, and have been working in the industry for 17 (amost 18) years now.
I still have the drive to learn, the faculties to handle problems logically, and the attitude and aptitude to survive in this industry.
All I can say to the younger generations, is bring it on. =)
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Older Programmer
Younger Programmer :
These is an over generalizations, but for the most part I have had better experiences with programmers older than me than younger. I personally have been the jerk young programmer, so I know where they come from, and so you work with them (as they are less expensive usually) until they become older mature programmers.
Unfortunately I have run mostly into young programmers that just don't want to do things the long hard way that works better... usually they do the absolute minimum of work, push off responsibitly onto others... but there are alwasy exceptions, I have worked with great younger programmers, but I've worked with better older programmers.
$.02
Other than stocking up on hair dye and botox, what steps can I take to prepare for the future?
You can start by not whining about how other peoples decisions have such a major impact on your life. If you dont like the situation your in, start your own company and tell your boss to go fuck himself.
Oh, but its not so simple you say. I have all these bills, car, house, insurance, etc. Well chief, its your life and its your choices. For some people their materialism will always outweigh the desire to be their own person. No matter how good it sounds to be able to be in control of your own destiny, most people will cave into having the nice car and big house. Only you can decide where in your life heirarchy being more independent comes in.
You started on the rat-race path because you wanted the 'good-life', dont be afraid that its coming to its natural conclusion as it has for EVERYONE before you.
He, we all get old, I'm 45, I rember when, back in 1974, I read an article about high-tech workers (electrical engineers)(a time before PC's and micros)..when people were complaining about being laid of at 45 because they were "over the hill" and using yonger workers "who knew more" because they were fresh out of university and knew the latest stuff and were cheaper....at the time, I thought that there should be a method of life extention technology to stave off this stupid situation, now-a-days, we are closer to practical life extention because of the human geneome project, biotech and now nanotech will enable creative people everywhere to re-engineer themselves so they don't get old, and then nobody could accuse you of getting old, they could just fire you because you cost too much, but anyway, probablly, we won't need this current economic situation (read capitalism) because using nanotech, we will have evolved to the next situation of existance where everybody could exist quite well wtihout having to buy anything (ie: think replicators as of in star trek), and the most important thing will be creativity and not the grubbing for money (or, like bill gates, the abillity to grub for money) which drives most societies world-wide (ask most people, they think bill gates is great because he is rich, they don't know he does not make good products or care to know)
I think the problem here is that the manager doesn't understand the distinction between programming and two subject matters where age really does matter:
1. Language learning. The younger you are, the faster you will learn HUMAN languages. This is a peculiarity of our neurological system and the way it handles (ambiguous human) syntax - as the brain is developing, the language centers of the brain are configured to better handle the sorts of linguistic tasks that the child's native language requires most. This is not a skill differential that I think is transferrable to learning purely symbolic languages like computer languages.
2. Higher math - great pure mathematicians tend to burn out around 30.
as the decision to hire younger (and typically cheaper) employees
This cost decision often blows up in your face. On my favorite tech support coop board I've been following the adventures of a swaggering 20 year old tech school grad whose project was to upgrade the two disks in the small company server. So far, it's taken a week of misadventures that I'm sure bogged down work as the kid removed the NT PDC from the domain, resorted to upgrading it to 2K to get it back on, and lost everyone's Outlook files in the process. Companies with the 'hire the new kid' mentality will not be as competitive as the 'hire the experienced older person' companies. Sure, they got this kid for $33K but they've had to pay a consultant already to pull him out of the fire he started.
Damn, I am really not getting old am I? I'm 25 right now, still the youngest in my company. I dont think younger coders are faster, they certainly dont produce quality code quickly. They do show less signs of burnout. I always get the feeling that they are excited about what they are doing, where as I am more cynical of the whole thing, having survived the long hours and insane deadlines of the last days of the internet boom. I think if I was being interviewed these days, I would give off the impression that I dont Care about your Stupid Company and its Stupid little projects. How much vacation time will I be getting, and is your compensation worth my driving all the way out here every day? 4 years ago, I did not even take vacations, work was my life and I enjoyed it. I think the older we get, the more time we want to live our lives outside of work.
TallGreen CMS hosting
There's an obvious corollation between lines of code produced and productivity, but it's hardly an absolute.
Who's the more productive? A programmer who writes a 2000-line program, or a programmer who writes a 1000-line program that does the same thing? Often times, pumping out extra lines of code is a sign of inexperience. Someone who's been at it for a long time has a better understanding of how things work, and is a lot more likely to write tighter (and hence less buggy and more maintainable) code.
I think one problem is a lack of understanding of this on the part of non-coder management. With managers trying to save money, it's tempting to hire cheaper coders who produce lower-quality code, but that code then costs you money when it's time to fix and upgrade it. Unfortunately, the only solid figure the managers ever get is that the young guy costs the company 40k less than the old guy.
Compaines aren't going to be quick to hire old techies unless they're run by old techies.
I hav notissed a defunnit loss of spailing abilletty ovur the yeers.
Table-ized A.I.
I remember my first interview well:
Future Boss: Tell me a little about yourself.
Me: Goo. *hic* dada??
Future Boss: No, could be, but no.
Me: BigBird is my dad.
Future Boss: Oh? uhm, how long you been coding?
Me: All of life.
Future Boss: Have you ever owned your own business?
Me: I had this many: III (fingers)
Future Boss: And you have management skills?
Me: Give me a cracker!
Future Boss: You realize you will be responsible for 20 employees over the age 35 and they require delicate handling. They are very tempermental and you have to make them do everything twice before they get it right. They ask allot of questions. They think of quality, and not of the bottom line. Very tempermental.
Me: Can I make them change my diaper?
Future Boss: Sure! You're our youngest, soon you'll be my boss. Age matters around here.
Me: Otay, I wanna go home now.
Future Boss: Wow. Your hired. I love that suit! I'm envious. I haven't fit into a 4Y in years.
Me: Buy me new servers. I want Red Hat, I love Red Hat, RedHat is old school. Red Hat is 'sick'. Fire that old man, he scares me. I wanna this company running XBoxes for our new mail servers. Is that a girl? Girls are Euweee!!!
Future Boss: Finally, a prodigy. Finally, someone I can relate to.
I was hired, and am now 12 and run the IT department for WorldCom and am special council to the White House.
It's not about having a quicker mind, I know plenty of people who are in the late-30s, 40s, 50s, etc who are plenty sharp and on the ball. Having a wide experience base gives you more to draw from when envisioning a solution.
What I found out from several of the companies I've worked for is that they don't want you to have a bunch of social ties and responsibilities. Have a wife, kids, or aging parents? Don't call us, we won't call you. We'd rather hire someone who's brand-new in town with no social life and that we can work 80+ hours a week until they burn out. This is a technique that's been employed by the likes of MCI, Qwest, Enron, WorldCom, etc.
They don't like people who are older because we are typically married, have kids, and aging parents; all responsibilities that take time away from the 80+ work week. It also means that you have experience and typically want more money. Again, they'd rather hire 2 22-year-olds at $30K/year each rather than spending $60K on one person. 160+ hours of effort a week from the youngsters, or 40-60hrs/week from one person with family responsibilities? Which do you think a company would choose?
Is there ageism in the IT industry? Yes. Is it going away anytime soon? Hopefully when the corporations realize that experience counts.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I am 62. I started in data processing in 1959, learning how to 'code' the old IBM 402 tabulators. In 1967, in grad school, I learned Fortran. After a 10 year pause I returned to high level coding and I've been writing code every since.
I did code faster, and sometime better, when I was younger. That was because I was willing then to code till 3 AM and then drive to a client's business the next morning. And, the lessons of advanced math were still warm in my memory when I coded a Gaussian sweep solution to a 3rd order polynomial array which I derived from a partial differential I created to solve a land leveling problem.
In 1968 my IQ tested out at 145 and I couldn't finish the test because of an emergency. A few days ago it tested out at 131. Did I loose 10% of my gray matter? I don't know. Perhaps, and perhaps not. I do have some recall problems for long term facts but not short term fact, which I attribute to an Aspartame alergy.
I do know one thing, though. I code a LOT SMARTER now than I did 30 years ago, and I know where and how to invest my time more wisely. Those young coders have yet to learn that you can burn the candle on both ends for only one wick, and I've seen a lot of the 'Wunderbars' come and go.
And dye your skin and hair brown. Get a fake Indian passport and you'll get hired as an H-1B. Problem solved. You will no longer have to worry about ageism.
YOU FAIL IT TOO!
God, the trolls these days SUCK.
> stocking up on hair dye and botox
More like stocking up hair, period. (And possibly antidepressants to treat the psychological effects of male-pattern hair loss).
You're 34 and aren't in management by now?
I think the idea that younger minds are better, faster, more flexable, etc., is simply a smoke screen. The issue I've run into is that I can't compete salary wise against younger kids. I need to make at least $4,000/month, but someone right out of college, with no wife and|or kids might be willing to work for $2,000/month.
-- Galen Rhodes grhodes@the-chatter-box.com Journal: http://journal.the-chatter-box.com/users/grhodes "Consistency
Achille Talon
Hop!
They want 8 years of experience doing this, and certifications to do that, and for you to be 20 years old and willing to work for minimum wage. And they think they can get it because we are all out there and hungry.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I see the results of these hot shot programmers. Over engineered, fragile software that works fine on their development system but nowhere else.
If you want good s/w look for a slow, lazy programmer...
The problem is that I do not believe his idiocy is unique
Where did you get that idea from? It's not idiocy - it's a reality. I know that I won't be coding till I am in my 40s. Neither do I want to. I mean, it's true, people are different, and some people in their 40s are indistinguishable in many ways from people in their early 20s. But if you think about it, there are some abilities that are required that few 'older' people people possess. Among them
- If you are older, married and have a family you are less excited about staying till unholy hour of the morning finishing a project that has an imminent deadline tomorrow...
- If you are older, you are more set in your ways and would rather use the skills you already have rather than learn something totally new and off-the-wall. Yes, your skills may be very valuable, but you may lack the flexibility your employer is looking for. Let me re-phrase that. When faced with a new problem, I first try to see if I already know from prior experience how to solve it, and, if I do, use that experience, even though it may not be the most optimal solution. That's how we, human beings operate. That's why we have education, right? On the other hand, few areas change as quickly as software and your "solution based on experience", while still good, may not be the best one, and not the one your employer is looking for. In that sense, under some circumstances, your experience may be more of a drawback than a benefit.
- While some older people become wiser, and take criticism better, many others do become grumpy old men, and find it hard to be taught and criticised by the kids in their teens that apparently know some things better.
- When you get older you won't be willing to accept some of the jobs and tasks (especially the thankless ones like sysadmin) as readily as the younger people.
- Last, but not least (especially in today's pitiful economy), when you are younger, you will settle for less pay, more hours, and your insurance will be cheaper. Isn't that why a lot of developer jobs are moving to Russia, Romania, India, et.al.?
No idiocy - just face the reality! While discrimination based on age is illegal, it is true that you may not be able to perform certain tasks when you get older. Just like a 60-year old lady won't get a job at hooters, you won't be a coder in your 40s. So, start transitioning to a manager position in your 30s, while you still can - that's where you belong, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Jobs? Which jobs?
I think the reason they go for the young ones is they can pay them less. People are generally cheap.
I'm 40 years old and the oldest person in my dept. I was the oldest at the last gig I had and the oldest at the gig before that. Before that, I wasn't the oldest. There were a couple of the battle scarred coding vets working there. You know the type, the guys that THINK in 256bit encryption?
Since 1996, I've usually been either the oldest or darned close to the oldest in every development company I've worked for. I wade through the hoardes of 'fresh outs' to get to my cube. These inexperienced kids are talented, but they have a tendency to believe they know alot more than they do. I've found that I usually have a much broader and deeper experience than these kids, even though I wasn't able to finish college for financial reasons. Sure, there is the occasional WunderKind, I'm just generalizing about the typical early 20s hiree.
How to prepare for this? Good luck. If people perceive you as an old mare ready for the glue factory, there's little you can do. Your possible options include dealing with it as best you can, forming your own business and changing career to something less generationally discriminative.
As a coder in my mid twenties (10 years ago) I had a feeling something like this would be an issue in my career. I decided to go back to school and get a Ph.D. and go teach. Once I get tenure.... YEAH baby, they're going to need a crowbar to get my ass out the door!
Also, why don't stories have the year? When you look at and old story, how do you tell what year it's from?
Random is the New Order.
Lots of people learn to program in high school--or earlier. And after a quick learning curve of approximately three to four years, such a person will be a fairly competent programmer for certain types of tasks. He won't be a master; you wouldn't want that person architecting anything sizable. And he'll have monstrous gaps in his knowledge. But you know what? That kind of general grunt programming covers about 90% of the coding work out there. It doesn't take a masters degree to churn through data files with Perl, or to put together some forms and SQL queries with Visual Basic. It really doesn't If you give that kind of work to someone who is 20, is unattached, and maybe lives in a town where he doesn't know anyone outside of work, he'll churn through it faster than someone with a wife and kids. And the 20 year old will be cheaper.
This isn't an insult to people over thirty. I am over thirty. It's more that most programming is pretty simple, and therefore it makes sense to have it done by cheap, almost slave labor.
As programmer becomes a true master, which is something that takes a decade or more and a wide variety of professional experience, that person will be much less inclined to just write brute force solutions in Visual Basic. He'll start to think more, wonder why we're wasting our time using garbage like C++ or why most Visual Basic programs end up being the same and therefore should be replaced by something more succinct and automated. But that kind of thinking doesn't do much good. It takes more time to think about such things than to just write the damn code for the ugly way.
There is certainly more to hiring then just the amount of experience someone has. They could certainly want to higher "fresh, young minds" instead of older more experienced individuals. Is it wrong to want to hire someone who seems fresher, and has a mind that they can mold more?
... and certainly, just because ITGuyA had issues with Software B, ITGuyB may have had a better experience with Software B.
When you hire an older individual in the IT field, you also tend to hire someone who already has very strong beliefs in most areas. They will be less likely to take you down certain roads due to their own experiences
Having interviewed numerous people for IT related jobs, I've found that it all depends on the position. If I'm hiring a Senior Network Admin, I probably want someone with a lot of experience. If I'm hiring a basic programmer, I both don't want to pay for someone with a lot of experience (because the older IT Folks often are still under the delusion that they should be making the money they were during the boom) and I also could want someone who we can mold into the company more easily.
When it comes down to it, it's a matter of individual, not a matter of age. During the interview, you can find that an older individual could have a very quick mind. In the end, it's all about the interview and how much money they want. And it is a fact that older IT folks tend to think they deserve a lot more money, while the younger folks both don't have the experience to demand money, and also are starting to understand that the IT Field isn't paying what it used to. Thank goodness.
And they probably haven't yet developed the ability to see through corporate BS to know when they're getting screwed.
This company just wants to break in newbies.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
This is an old article. It's been on the BBC at least three days already! You should have picked a more youthful one. ;-)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
I don't think age directly affects program quality. I agree that age/experience tends to help the quality of programs simply because developers (I get images of Steve Ballmer, clapping and yelling "Developers!" when I write that) have made mistakes and know what not to do. At the same time, I've seen programs built and maintained by "older" programers that were of terrible quality.
In the end, I think that design methodology and project planning are what drive quality of a program. Being older and more experience lends to better design, but certainly does not exclude younger programmers from having good development skills. If I were an employer, I would prefer the coder who designs well over anything else, despite age.
Take this how you will: I work as an engineer for a small tech company in the heart of Silicon Valley. This comes a year after I started working there as an intern. I recently expressed the desire to travel abroad to some of my fellow employees. They sent my resume around, and as a result, I am heading traveling to France next month for a two month job, and to Australia immediately after that for another job. A company in the Netherlands has also shown to be very interested in hiring me. I am seventeen. I graduated from highschool two weeks ago. All of the hiring parties are aware of these last two facts. Go Figure.
Vote with a bullet.
From the user comments to the BBC article:
:)
"In the IT sector (and coding in particular) younger minds generally work faster."
This is utter bullcrap.
I'm in my early 30s and been doing tech lead (lead teams of 5 - 20 people) for about 2 years now. I've worked with a lot of programmers, young and old. I've supervised, peered and worked under older programmers.
In my experience working faster has nothing whatsoever to do with age. It's everything to do with ability and experience though.
My experience tells me that even if a (really) young person was seemingly working faster, they really aren't, because their lack of experience generally makes them work on the wrong things. They do double the work, work on the wrong things and make more mistakes. That certainly applied to me when I was younger.
This is happening all over the place on the current team I'm managing. The youngest (most inexperienced) people are constantly the people I'm spending most of my time with. The older folks, not only know when to ask for help, but also produce less defects, so their work is much more efficient. They probably type slower though, if that's what "working faster" means...
Sometimes, very rarely though, a youngster can overcome his lack of experience by being truly brilliantly talented. I've had the pleasure of working with a handful of such people. The results these sort of people produce, are nothing short of amazing. Gotta give credit where credit is due. The next time you usually see these people is when they get that corner office with outside view
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill ignorance
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I've played the piano since i was 7 and coded since i was 6.
I stuck at piano for over 10 years but i sucked at it. I mean i could play stuff relatively well but it never clicked into place.
OTOH i can code in my sleep, i've coded A graded uni assignments after 8 hour drinking sessions. It's just completely natural to me and I can see how to decompose just about any problem into code.
Over the years my code has become more sophisticated as i've picked up more skills, but that's just what comes of learning new techniques and languages.
I really think it's just different minds are suited to different things. I was never meant to be a musician.
I ran up against a few problems. For starters, years of programming experience, but in the wrong area. For that matter, not even enough years of those - I had been out of college two years so I had two years of "real world" experience, so even people with three or four years had me beat - plus theirs were in more recent fields. Not to mention the tons of dot-commers I was up against and trying to make my resume sound good, but not sound like one of those know-nothings that throw lots of acronyms out there.
And yet I didn't want to be like a coworker on my team - he was over thirty years older than me and desparately looking for a new job. But he knew the one thing - COBOL/Mainframes - and didn't think he needed to learn anything new. He was like the guy with a hammer who never saw a problem that wasn't a nail. For that matter he had even tried to get a job at Home Depot closer to where he lived (he had a 1.5 hour one-way commute since he figured he would have a new job where he lived soon) but places like Home Depot want to hire the 16-year-old they can strap a belt to and work 55 hours a week, or the guy in his 50's with decades of plumbing experience.
So I was in this interesting spot where I had the advantage of being young in a field which likes young people, but being almost too young. What was basically going to have to happen was that someone takes a shot with me.
And that happened. In the course of six months I made it here, and now I realize I have to work my ass off to keep up.
Ageism works both ways. The difference is that when it works against your youth you'll survive.
Schnapple
Maybe this guy should quit IT and start a new life as an English teacher. :-)
I'd take the over thirty guy, all other things being equal.
We hired a guy who is about 60 who is useless, really really useless. He's our only principal engineer.
I was 24 at that point, knew our product backwards and forwards and by most accounts was performing like someone with 10 years experience (I had 4). I was "too young" to be made a principal engineer... but this other joker...
Of course, I turned 25 and my title became Architect.
Yes, my management is insane. Yes, I'm trying to escape ASAP!
I'm 33 and I earn a living fixing and redoing the mad, coding of a prolific 20-something who learned how to code on the job. The young get in, get their money, get out, and leave the mess for us "older folk" to clean up. Young coders = job security for experienced coders.
All that this guy is saying is that "HE" would prefer to hire a younger mind that codes more quickly. Younger coders tend to not comment as much, to test as much, etc. So he's saying that he wants code that might not be as detailed, but that gets out the door faster. That's his company model, so who cares?
... he's making a generalization. There is nothing wrong with that, and this generalization is likely true. "In general, bigger companies have a bigger bueracracy." You're not saying whether it's right or wrong for it to happen, you're just saying that in general it's the case. It's not always the case, but it generally is. So you'd generally expect it to be the case until you see differently.
... but he's going to let the generalization make his life easier instead of interviewing a bunch of individuals who won't likely fit what he's looking for.
... thank goodness most of them, as was already mentioned, are stuck in the Internet Boom days and ask for much more money then they are worth. Otherwise, the younger programmers couldn't find any work. But because we're willing to get paid reasonably, we get work. :)
And then he also says that younger coders generally code faster
I wouldn't doubt it if this guy would higher an older coder that coded quickly
Try being the younger coder in a market where there are plenty of jobless network admins and web programmers with lots of experience
-- All of us older coders who are suddenly useless can all sign SCO's NDA because we know we'll never work in IT again anyway.
I've been jonesing all day.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
All I can say is - after ten+ years of programming experience (and that's just industry, not counting the stuff I did in college and before) I'm still telling some people what hashtables are. And they were around before I learned to program.
At the most basic level, programming is the same as it was thirty years ago. You can just do more with it, is all.
How programs interact is not even all that different, just mechanisms moved into different worlds.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... After that teenager f..ked things up, there will be a call made to one of the experienced, 30+ consultants (like me)
Then why aren't all the new grads getting all the jobs? Why does everyone want someone with 5-10 years experience?
Or maybe I'm just reading the wrong job postings.
Now that you are older with a strong background and the wisdom and high-level perspective of some tech area or another, you must be bold and try to create ideas yourself instead of spending all the time learning other people's ideas as you used to in your youth.
Exploit the wisdom and wide and/or deep perspectives of a field that only get better with age. Youngsters simply cannot compete with you in this ability. Well, except for some geniuses maybe.
So become a leader and stop being a follower in your field. Don't spend all your time passively following the technology developments. Instead actively develop new ideas yourself. Even if this does not help you in your day job or lead you to fame, you will still have the deep satisfaction that comes with creative activity. And if some technology idea or invention is *your* baby, then you will have the natural passion and enthusiasm to follow it up and popuralize it in conferences and standards committees and what not. You will actually enjoy it instead of feeling like its hard work done in a thankless job or whatever.
You know you have the potential to do this. You simply have to actualize it.
I recently have been journaling on /. about the IT sector in general. The BBC link on Ageism is in that entry, but another interesting link is there too. It's about IT going the way of the railroad and IT being a commodity. This has been previously covered on /.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I have been a guitarist for over 40 years. My experience teaching music to all ages of people is that younger people do seem to attack things with a higher level of energy. I have also been a programmer for 20 years, and I now manage developers. The similarities between music and programming are astounding. They are both very abstract vehicles used to accomplish something that only resembles the task at hand in physical ways. In music, the initial task is to create sound with an instrument. As the years go by, and if there is an artist involved in the process, the sound begins to take on a meaning that transcends the physical action of playing. That musical meaning is what causes one to "study" a piece of music for an entire lifetime. I have been playing some pieces for 30 years. It usually takes about a week to memorize about a page of music. Depending on the composition, the rest of the time is to understand not only the intention of the composer - ranging itself from zero to infinite meaning - but to find the relationship of the music to what an individual wants to express. Software is pretty much the same thing. When I first started programming, I didn't understand the architecture of complex systems. I was able to attack small jobs with a tenacity that always resulted in a working solution. I shudder to think of the the poor bast...s that must now be supporting that code. However, that doesn't invalidate the work I did. I pulled companies out of big deadline troubles back in those days, and that kept the money flowing in. If I had known then what I know now, I would have insisted in designing a robust, supportable system. It would not have been completed in time to meet the demands of the customer, and I would have been fired. If you want quick work with some innovation that might not have had the test of time, young people can often provide that much faster than those who are experienced, and can't work like a bull in a pasture filled with cows in heat. Although, to extend that analogy somewhat, I still dream about having that opportunity :-)
I think many will agree that there are plenty (possibly a majority), of "older" programmers who command hefty rates who are just plain *BAD* programmers. After a few expensive experiences with this group, some may conclude that it just is not worth the money. I can hire a couple kids out of school to build crap, why should I pay someone $100/hr for crap?
As a business owner, a capatialst, this is absolutely fantastic. If you want to be mad, be mad at the person that hired the young buck that will have your job. Successful people aren't intimidated by other successful people. Do you think Bill Gates or George Bush is worried about the new intern?
The evolution of society is yielding a group oriented approach to problem solving as well as development. Younger people have had more exposure to techniques that make them more effective inside of a group. Additionally, you have the "Elroy Jetson" effect, where skills such as calculas were once only available to older, more mature minds; however, we have become so good at teaching this relatively complex subject, that teenagers-without-driver's-license can do calculus. Not only can they do calculas, but they can do it on paper, on a calculator, or on a computer.
The real secret is trasnferable skills. Because younger people have had access to more technology during their developmental years, they will undoubtedly be more keen to technology and have adapted a transferable skill set not present in many IT dinasaurs.
Most of the old people in the IT industry are more worried about politics and keeping their own 'status-quo' than focusing on WHAT THEY ARE BEING PAID TO DO - the importance of innovation and success of a project are forgotten. Only those with a youthful intellect and creative mindset are fit to work in IT as it is an ever-expanding space.
Most of the older IT people shouldn't even be working these days; why didn't these over-30 "non-bafoons" make their millions during the dot-com boom? The people that made their millions are not worried about the new kid. The people that didn't make their money when they had the chance have to make you wonder WHY? Is it because they ARE sub-par? Is it because they lack business sense? Is it because they are too focused on something else? Is it because they are too old? Too slow? Too lazy? Lack of ambition? These people should be put out to pasture. Obviously they are feeling inadequate - as they should.
IT is a labor industry. Once billed as a refuge for the highly intelligent and socially inept; now however, you see the same dynamic as you would in the construction world. Old people don't work as fast, they're more expensive, they want benefits, etc. The younger people introduced to the construction job have to work faster than the older guy to get hired, they have to work faster to get the job done and frequently, it's just a matter of time until the old dog is put to sleep. Youth brings energy and excitement. Old age brings staleness and politics as these old people are trying to keep what they've got; but perhaps aren't earning.
Honestly, your fear of the youth is probably well grounded, for the youth are the future; the youth are taking over. Instead of crying in your cereal; help to teach them. Help to build the youth in to the future that is best for all instead of whining about not being the hot shot.
Same sort of thing with IT. If you are not rich by now, then something must be wrong with you.
If you are such a brilliant coder, create something that brings the wealth to you. If all you want to be is a 2080hr/yr slave for someone, enjoy!
"Younger minds work faster but older minds work smarter. I have both working for me and the young folks may be holding larger and more diverse constructs in their minds, but the older ones are holding well-tuned, more efficient constructs in theirs."
Agreed. The funny thing is I've proably forgotten more than most young people have learned. But I still miss the flexibility of juggling mental constructs the same way a juggler juggles balls. Ah well.
Anyway "working smarter, not harder" is the way. That's why I've taken up OOPS languages, because life is too short.
It's changing. There was definitely some bias, but it's switching, and in a few cases, reversing.
First, in the downturn, the older more experienced programmers come cheaper.
Secondly, despite all the changes in technology, older people come with a valuable knowledge of history. I recently had to solve a problem with scripting that someone without my experience wouldn't even have an inkling of.
Third, older people come with broader knowledge. That is making a lot of difference over time. I've noticed more experienced programmers also fulfilling analysist niches while they code, drawing on their knowledge.
Fourth, older people come with more diverse knowledge. On my last job search, half the time my interviews started with questions on non-technical skills.
Fifth, you can hire a code-only person. That's fine. You can also outsource them to another company or country. It's easier to outsource a year of experience than it is ten years experience.
I don't see as much ageism, and my guess is it's going to decrease over time. I'm in my 30's and I work with many people my age or older.
Just my 1/50 of a Euro at current exchange rates.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
I don't know what young worker you're talking about, but if my first employer tried to pull crap like that on me, I'd laugh in his face. I know my rights as a worker, and anything over 40 hours a week is time-and-a-half. If they have a problem with me getting paid overtime, HIRE MORE PEOPLE!!!
I'm only 27, but I am just now taking undergraduate Computer Science courses. I find that 18 and 19 year olds have greater cognitive abilities than the older students in the classes. They notice mistakes in lecture, but may not necessarily be able to explain why those mistakes cause problems. In an environment with both older and younger programmers, it might look to an outsider that the young people have greater aptitude when they start correcting the older programmers, who may actually understand the program in greater detail but made a simple mistake. Of course, there are incredible programmers of all ages.
+5, Beautiful
That describes exactly how I feel about programming.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My previous company had me cross-train as a Windows NT MCSE just before they riffed me. A 50-something MCSE with one year of experience is a bit of a joke, I found. (Not just in Slashdot-land, but in the real world, too!)
All of the web developers here are well under thirty, so your skill set seems to determine how your age is perceived. Java seems to be a "young person's" language.You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
...the decision to go with less experienced programmers also affects software quality, in the long run.
Yes, it does. Period. Young'uns are more likely to choose immature tools, more likely to make predictable mistakes, more likely to jump on whatever bandwagon started rolling last week, and on and on.
If you wanted to assemble a great symphony, you don't interview at the mall record store on Saturday night. If you want to build a bridge, you don't go to the day care and see who has a knack for Lincoln Logs.
Seriously, kids graduating from college are more like that toddler with Lincoln Logs than most of us would like to admit.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Harsh words, but I think it is the truth for most
of the cases.
The problem is that those thirty-ish people are apparently doing jobs that
can be done by (young) people without experience in the organisation and more advanced skills.
IOW they have been sitting on their ass during the comfy IT hype times, without moving on to more
crucial positions, didn't work on their skillset,
got no regular diploma's in fundamental skills, but only did some work related fashionable trainingcourses that are totally unwanted and under appreciated.
Choosing a job isn't a selection based on salary and secundary job conditions alone. Growth oppurtunities are also a major factor.
During the boom, a lot of people this didn't apply
to them, but now reality has rushed in, now that the tide is turning, and they are starting to feel the heat.
And they are relatively lucky still. The amount of
hobbyist really young people that drop out of school and try to find a job is low, both because the IT sector is getting less hobbyist, and due to the same ecomomic circumstances.
I have been playing fiddle music and dancing to it for a very long time and you can almost always (as in 99.99%) tell when someone has learned it as an adult. The adults tend to be more jerky dancers and the same holds true with the fiddle music. The turning point is somewhere in the early teens. There is just a feel and flow that is learned as a child that cannot be picked up as an adult. Of course, a practiced adult is better than a beginner student, but it is a question of potential.
I mean, read this quote: What is the youngest you can be before some PHB declares you fit for the scrap-heap? Other than stocking up on hair dye and botox, what steps can I take to prepare for the future? Share your war stories here...
While I can understand the desire to find a job, the frustration with discrimination based on age, possibly the desperation he experiences, etc., he is asking the wrong question. I can understand that his potential employers may not be treating him fairly, but did he give it any thought that they may have a point (though probably not expressed very well). Slow down and think:
1. Are there any skills/abilities that I have lost over the years?
2. Have I changed in any way that makes me less productive (got the venerable carpal syndrome, got a family I'd rather spend time with than slave at the office, etc)?
3. Is my lifestyle more expensive then 10-20 years ago? (aka "Do I expect more compensation for what I do?")
Now, imagine yourself in your employer's shoes and think: A certain prospective employee is great. He is experienced, has good reputation/resume/references, education and does high quality work. But do I really want to hire him, if can't do [insert things from list 1 above] as well as a 20-year-old who also sumbited a resume? Who is also slower than the same 20-year-old because of [2] and expects more pay [3]? Just based on your resume and (hopefully) an interview, all your strengths that may outweigh the benefits of hiring a younger person won't be obvious to the employer.
Now, consider that in today's market there can be 10 resumes of those 20-year-olds that will literally 'code for food' slaving around the clock competing with yours.
You may die your hair (grow it first if some is missing) all you want, but chances are you don't look as attractive to an employer as you think. And there is no better way of seeing this than getting out of your own bubble, getting over the hurt feelings, and trying to get into the hiring manager's shoes. His job isn't easy either.
Jobs? Which jobs?
After two weeks with no word back, I sent him a friendly e-mail. Turns out that they decided to fill the "Software Engineer 2" position with a recent college graduate with NO EXPERIENCE.
Here's something else to check out: http://jobs.hiresystems.com/EMK_251/jobdetails.cfm
Kodak wants a "senior engineer" with NO MORE THAN 5 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE... And this is for a non-software position--their software engineering is generally much worse--the "3-5 years of experience" job description will contain additional "requirements" in the details along the lines of "must have at least 5 years of experience", making it a narrow window of exactly five years of experience.
I was just laid off and have been looking at a lot of jobs and talking to people. Right now, it seems that employers are looking for very experienced people. Hard to be that the younger you are.
Also, do you want to work at a company that thinks that older IT people aren't as capable? I say, find another company.
I'm assuming then that he and you put it on your resume. Just like the other guy said most college students come out with effectively zero experience. That is why I had 25 interviews my junior year (first semester) and was hired before my senior year started (over 15 job offers) and my best friend who copied my resume exactly (removing the "actual" experience I had) had 3 interviews his entire senior year and had zero job offers.
//e when I was a kid in BASIC and my best friends dad taught us how to do some programming (that's what he did for a living). It's still not on my resume.
If you can show you are willing to bust your ass in college instead of drinking every night, playing CounterStrike and downloading warez/mp3s of Kazaa, your experience won't be zero.
However, programming in QBasic on a DOS based system when you were 9/10/11 doesn't show a damn thing about what you can do now.
I programmed on my Apple
I think a better question is whether a programmers ability is affected by the length of his beard.
... and I will hit you with my cane!
I have been told that I don't like OOP because I am "too set in my procedural ways". I am tired of hearing this. Nobody has shown that OOP is objectively superior for business modeling and I think it is actually a step-back return to the chaotic pre-relational organizational structures of the 1960's. The author David A. Taylor (Ph.D) is rumored to have said something like, "Experienced procedural programmers are too hard to retrain because OO is a way of thinking, not just a syntax. Thus, fire the proceduralists and hire young OO-trained developers." (I have not verified that claim.)
Regardless of which side you take on this issue, it makes for an interesting fight. At best, I think OO is a personal choice. It may fit some people's minds better, but is not objectively superior for all domains and usages.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm 37 and have been in IT for a dozen years or so, but programming for about 20. I'm in charge of providing standards, best practices and technical support and advice to 250+ developers.
It's not how many rings there are when they cut you open, it's how well you can navigate the technologies. I don't just people on how many languages they know or even what technology they are proficient in. For programmers, it's what their problem solving skills and adaptivity level is when the pressure is on or something challenging is presented.
Software skills cannot be measured by number of years. I know coders that are 17 years old that can dance circles around me while at the same time others in their age group that couldn't assemble their way out of a paper bag. The same for the old geeks like myself. There's good and bad everywhere, it's just a matter of being able to sift through the silicon jungle and do what you're best at.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -Bernard Berenson
I'm 38 and have been hacking/coding since I got my first C64 and Timex Sinclair. I now write smallish business/accounting apps and even though I may have slowed down a bit, I'm still way more productive than any of the wiz kids around me. Yes they code faster and yes they catch on to new things quicker, but they haven't got a clue how the world works. They can't write stuff that is user-friendly, they can't present their ideas in a resonably inteligent manner and they can't deal with the general office worker. They can't anticipate how a less-informed office person will mis-interpert their terminology and layouts. They can't imagine that a general office person doesn't know when to single click and when to double click. They can't create a consistant interface without serious bitching.
If you want a game engine, a kernel, a driver or anything that doesn't require the code to interact with a human directly, then hire a kid. If you're writing software for humans to use then get someone old and crusty.
G
Posting as AC to protect the guilty
I have been coding for over 10 years. Today I reviewed the code of my junior co-worker, who is in thier first year of professional coding.
I'm not worrried. They had a lot to learn.
I interviewed for a contract programming gig at a major investment company a couple years ago. The guy I talked to was about my age (I'm 37), and even though he didn't have direct hiring authority I'm sure I clinched the job when we traded war stories that included UUCP and VT-class terminals. I think he was pretty impressed (Hi Mike!) that I'd hacked the DOS version of UUCP to work over INT14 modem pools.
The team I was eventually assigned to, I was the oldest worker bee by a couple of years, and in fact I was a few months older than my manager, which was a first for him. He got over it well enough.
No real point to this, just one more old geek anecdote.
Of course, the hiring manager that made this little remark better hope that no one over 30 who didn't get a job offer from that company can figure out which company this poster works for. That statement is blatantly illegal, and I hope it winds up costing that company thousands in litigation and that idiot manager his job. For those of you who don't know, age discrimination in employment is prohibited under federal law, and a statement like this one is just the kind of smoking gun that plaintiffs' lawyers have wet dreams about.
The good thing about having two young guys for the price of one older guy is that the salaries would be equal, and you have redundancy between the two - which means you can fire one and instill fear in the other.
Most importantly, with schools having to lower standards to meet "leave no child behind" decrees, the US is churning out more simpletons (look at Bush's popularity among young folk) who arent much competition to older programmers (I count myself as one of them). On a slightly less inflamatory note, I work for a government research lab and the new hires we are getting are lazier, can't program worth a damn, and don't want to learn anything new. In short, I feel pretty secure. Industry is another matter, I guess, since you have to deal with off shore programmers too, who are, regarldless of age, cheaper to hire.
I work with some younger people, one of which is fresh out of college. They guy is smart and gets things done quickly, very smart actually. The problem is he's all about the "look at me" factor and his test cases are the most optimal cases you'll ever find. He has no concept of testing the obscure cases, testing for the things that should never happen in the first place. Experience teaches you a lot of things, including the important of test, peer reviews, and different mistakes to avoid.
Granted, not everyone is like this, but how many "good teens" do you know of that can handle a real peer review w/o a lot of attitude and how many of these teens understand why test is important?
It's a matter of salary. Younger ppl cang be paid pennies with the excuse of lack of experience. And of course, never hire somebody experienced.
First, younger programmers have less experience in life. Lacking the well-earned caution of older professionals, they tend to be enthusiastic about their work, which they meet with alacrity. Managers often interpret this enthusiasm as "energy," "speed," and "higher productivity" -- all valuable traits worth seeking an an employee. Even though I know of no measurements or studies to support this interpretation, the perception is widespread, and it's not unreasonable for HR folks to act upon it.
Second, as others have pointed out, younger programmers usually have fewer extracurricular responsibilities to compete with work. Managers see this as increased devotion to the company and the opportunity to get more work for the same money. Again, it's not unreasonable to give preference to people with fewer extracurricular distractions.
Third, in the software industry, experience is rapidly devalued because the valuable mainstream technologies often make one another obsolete. (This is in contrast to, say, the legal profession, where decades-old experience is readily applicable.) While this fact doesn't directly benefit younger programmers, it does put more-experienced (and hence older) programmers at a disadvantage because they are perceived as wanting compensation for their vast, often irrelevant experience. In other words, managers often feel that more-experienced programmers want more pay than they are truly worth.
All of these reasons give managers and HR folks good reason to hire programmers who just happen to be young.
But, there's more to the story
That said, I have been coding for about twenty years. There is no doubt in my mind that the me of today can write much better software than the me of ten years ago, and I can do it in less time. Likewise, when I consider all of the young, hotshot coders who I used to work with when I was a young, hotshot coder, I would rather hire them as they are today than as they were back then. Simply put, they are better coders today.
Back then, we cranked out the code, and our employers loved us. But, being honest, much of that code was crap, and much of our "productivity" was wasted on false starts, gold plating, blind hackery, and all-night debugging sessions that could have been avoided by a more disciplined approach to creating software. The thing is, our managers couldn't tell the difference between fast, furious activity and true productivity. And neither could we.
And that's the most dangerous threat to older, more-experienced software professionals: Lack of measurement. I'm convinced that experienced professionals who have invested in their abilities, made consistent effort to learn from their mistakes, and know how to communicate effectively are worth their weight in gold. In the long haul, they will outpace inexperienced hotshots almost every time.
But without measuring actual performance, you'll never notice. You'll mistake long hours for productivity. You'll mistake unnecessary all-nighters for dedication. And you'll mistake older programmers for expensive versions of their younger counterparts.
So, if you are an older, experienced software professional, stop talking about "ageism". It's a lost cause. Start talking about realisitc productivity measurements. If you want to be perceived as more valuable, you'll have to do it the hard way: You'll have to prove it.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Slowest.
Dupe.
Ever.
I once worked a on large programming project where there was a big shift to move from an old style legacy codebase into the latest fashion of object oriented programming.
All the developers from the old project knew a lot about what the new project should have in the way of functionality, etc., but were not familiar with the intracacies of C++.
Younger people had spent their time learning the latest languages like C++ and so were in a position to write the new code, but they were not as familiar with what exactly the old code did (did well, did poorly, etc.)
Consequently, the project ended up winning some and losing some. It uses some recent sophisticated programming techniques to achieve, well, less than it could.
Obviously, what's best is to have both quick, sharp, uptodate young people and wise, experienced old people and to have them working together and communicating a lot to each other.
Discriminating against either the old or the young will set you back one way or another.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
As a quasi-employer (I have the ability to hire contractors for our small organization, and I do a lot of that, but not FTE's) I can tell you the two sources of résumés I tap most:
Young mothers, and young irc geeks. The IRC geeks are people I find because I myself am an IRC geek and I get to know them, and respect their ability to code. Young mothers because when you put an ad in the paper, they're people who are completely unemployed (hence willing to contract) but have a lot of energy to spare now that their kids are old enough to put in day care. The ads we put in the paper don't attract that many older workers, probably because they want full time jobs and more money than contracting usually allows.
A lot of people have argued that older people demand higher salaries once they get through the interview, but I can safely say that money doesn't enter into it for us. We pay our contractors a healthy living (in fact, we pay them more than I make, even though I myself am a programmer in addition to a project coordinator). The older people just don't come knocking.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
If someone turned you down saying you were too old, they are very foolish and you can now sue them.
It is illegal to ask an applicant his or her age. This law is designed to protect applicants over the age of forty. You may ask the applicant if he or
she is over the age of eighteen-if the applicant is not, you may need to know the applicant's age to ascertain the applicability of federal, state, and local child labor laws.
make the same mistakes you did yourself or wisely learned to avoid committing in the first place (usually by learning from somebody else's disaster.)
Some are painfully obvious to me but the PHBs and the co-workers have blind spots that just means that everything that I (and they) do is fundamentally flawed, undocumentable, will be a hemmorhoid to maintain and get trashed because it deserved to be still-born to start with.
Having a system designed by "people who knew" using Objects With States, but implemented by a "crew without a clue" who don't understand a thing about State Transition Engines, leads to duplicated, inelegant or just plain f*cked up code. When its gets to the GUI, its painful, just painful.
At least they pay me the little bucks and I eventually learned to just shut the f*ck up.
I just make sure to take my own advice whenever I can and write my code as well as I can. And when I have to pull off a real hack, I appologize in the explanatory comments.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It's as simple as this... we're younger, we're faster and you just don't stand a chance of keeping up with us. So why don't you go back to your quaint ranch style house with your milkmaid housewife, your 2.5 kids and your 1.5 dogs, and leave the coding to us, the superhumans of the next generation. Two words come to my mind when I think of you pops, "Early Retirement". Face it, you just aren't cut out for this job anymore... as they say, "you can't teach an old dog new tricks," and it doesn't come much older then you gramps. So just strap yourself into your rocking chair, pick up a good book and leave the future to us.
Viva la revolution!
There is some truth to the offending statement - but the statement itself is myopic.
It is true that younger techies work faster. It's obvious that they should, really, for the same reason that 16 year olds get more traffic tickets than people twice their age.
Us "old timers" have a decade+ of experience upon which to draw. It is true that to a degree the advancement of technology has mitigated the need for some of this experience. However, we are not automatons, and have abstracted the lessons we learned on old technology into general rules that apply in the modern context as well.
(Oh God, I'm actually making a "back in my day" post. Shoot me now!)
Anyway, kids do run fast around corners and such, because they've not fallen over very much, yet.
Now lets go and ask the HR drones who think this way about the amount of rework that bright-eyes and enthusiastic go-get'ers create. Let's talk about solutions that are not maintainable, and about implementation strategies that don't scale, that do not tolerate creeping features with grace.
There is a reason why jobs demand a degree, and there is a reason they demand "x years experience". Kids make great cannon fodder, in IT as well as in the military. They consider a death-march glorious, and have no wife or kids to rush home to.
But would you let a green officer, even from West Point, command your army? Would you send them on the elite and covert missions? If you would, you'll soon be flying someone else's flag.
Same with IT. If you choose the gung-ho, do-or-die punks to bring your mission critical product to market, you'll soon be sporting someone else's logo on your letterhead.
Kids have their place in IT. They can code like hell, and there is much to be gained from their stamina and fearlessness. But they need to be given clearly defined and well-contained tasks.
Hell, most of these kids can't write "Hello World" without the aid of their favorite IDE! Sure, they learn and grow and get wiser. But guess what?
By the time they've learned, grown and won their wisdom - they've become US, the old timers, who work slower, because they know better.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
However, one has to wonder if the decision to go with less experienced programmers also affects software quality, in the long run. What are your thoughts on this subject?
As a younger coder, I can tell you indeed it does afdfect it. It makes it MUCH BETTER (assuming you hire decent younger coders). I have worked with both younger and older coders, and to my experience the younger people design better, make more well throught out designs than their older counterparts. I think this is a result of older coders growing up with all the functional languages likc C et. al, and have a hard time wrapping their mind around the OO concept. They then use OO languages to write horrible code, because they do it in a procedural fashion. younger people, who "grew up" on OO, have no such problem, nor do they have a problem with procedural type problems, because theyr emerely a subset of OO.
The main problem with older coders I find is they are too set in their ways, and never take advice. Especially not from a younger person.
Many of you agree with me, and the important thing at this moment in time is not convincing other IT workers we are right. Not by any means, it's largely a waste of time. What we have to be doing now is finding each other, and organize together, then, collectively, we can present a message from IT workers to IT workers who have a different opinion, and more importantly, that larger body who is indifferent, one reason for their indifference being that they have not been presented with a point of view looking at the things that should be worried about and fought against (and things to fight for) collectively, as an organization, like the ITAA, high H1-B caps, section 1706 of IRS tax code, FLSA being destroyed and so on. The employers are organized and well-funded within the ITAA, and has had many successes, we should be organized to. They're smart enough to organize together, we should be smart and organize as well.
I don't think we're forced into any pre-built mode of organization - we should be building organizations as we see fit. Perhaps organize as doctors do in the AMA and lawyers in the ABA. Perhaps organize in unions like actors in SAG, or technical professionals do in the council of technical unions, CESO. CESO is very interesting, it started in the late 1960's out of a similar downturn to nowadays, except back then it was the aerospace bubble bursting, not the Internet one. Then there's the Programmers Guild, or groups primarily concentrated on lowering the H1-B cap. In fact, Programmers Guild meetings have seen a jump in attendance recently. I could mention IEEE and the like, but they're pretty pathetic, read around how their officers pulled the plug on H1-B measures at the behest of their corporate sponsors. One of the largest reasons this "profession" is in the mess it is is because unlike real professionals like doctors (AMA) and lawyers (ABA), there is no real professional association working for them (for actors I guess it would be SAG, which is a union - the important thing about unions is they do collective bargaining, e.g. wages are not bargained for on an individual basis. People always talk like that lowers wages, but the reverse is true if you look at any statistics - a heavily unionized industry even raises wages for non-unionized people in their industry). I should add I am in facor of more organization, period, and am unconcerned with the form it takes - in fact I'm glad we have all stripes of organizations competing for membership, from the somewhat conservative but effective Programmers Guild type organizations, through the Washtech/CWA type unions, on to the really radical IWW IU 560. You don't like unions? Join the Programmer's Guild. You want a union? Hook up with Washtech/CWA (or Cyberlodge/IAMAW). I support all of these, I just think we need more organized programmers/admin to combat the evil Intel/IBM/Microsoft organizations like the ITAA
Things are so crappy I really don't fucking want to hear from assholes full of hubris with their heads up their bosses ass talking about "merit" and how they're the world's greatest programmer. Fuck them. I'm working right now, but I am unhappy with what I am making, in fact, wages in IT
I think this IT agism depends on what area of IT you are in.
For example, I am in enterprise storage (think Hitachi HDS, IBM Shark, EMC Symmetrix, Compaq/HP StorageWorks, etc.). My last two jobs I've had, I've been the "baby" of the group since everyone else was 40+ years old. And I have 5 years experience in enterprise storage.
The mainframe folks are crusty old farts also, and telco people seem to be as well.
But I have no doubt that when it comes to sysadmin or coding, that cheaper, younger labor is preferred these days.
Just my 2 cents.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Please tell me where this is happening so I can get a job there -- I'm a young programmer (24) and nobody is fscking hiring me!
--My other sig is a ferrari.
... in the hiring managers statements is this:
- The salary demands of a younger employee is going to be proportionally less than the salary demands of a more experienced programmer. Therefore younger = lower cost
- The younger programmer will not at first bristle at demands to work unusually long hours to get a job done. The more experienced person will question the need for working longer hours.
For a quality product there is no substitute for experience. Companies now are not looking to produce a quality product, simply a cheaper one.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
You also forgot...
Are you as pliable as the 20 year old that I can push around the office and have him do my bidding at a drop of a hat. Being young tends to open ones-self to intimidation from those more powerful and experienced. Especially managers with a bit more political/behavior leverage that they've learned over the years being a manager. Getting older, one hopes to learn how to read, understand and discern certain "tricks" of the mind. "Resistance is not only futile, but does not support my agenda."
Being fresh out of school, discipline is still fresh in their minds. As much as you may argue that youngsters are reactionary to authority, those that start applying for real jobs generally have accepted it by the time they get to that point.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
I am older than the oldest Gen-Xers by 10 years. I always thought of myself and my contemporaries as developing "real" stuff: distributed, complex enterprise software. I've thought of Gen-X programmers as the ones who worked for Pets.com. There is some irony in seeing them in the role of the geezers.
I've had a 23-year old recruiter lecture me about industry cycles and interview techniques. I wanted to say, "Go work at Starbucks, Scooter. I was a working software engineer when your mom was still wiping your butt." If you want to spare yourself this sort of indignity, my advice is to find some people in the same boat and make something that someone will pay for. Then your selling a product, rather than yourself.
Tony Williams was drumming for Miles Davis at age 17. Jason Marsalis was a recording jazz drummer at 14.
In most places I've worked, most of the software engineers are married. A 21-year-old has a good chance of having small children in the next few years. And an employee with one or two babies/toddlers in the house is going to be WAY less able to work long hours than a 45-year old with teenagers (who are rarely even around).
That's the third choice that you are leaving out.
If you can't think of how to do it, the answer is to create anti-discrimation laws.
Ask any experienced programmer where the biggest costs lies, and they'll tell you it's fixing (or worst, working around) the crap left from rushed or ill-informed decisions made earlier.
And that experienced programmer would be wrong. Or at least need to clarify his statement. Fixing broken code is indeed expensive but it isn't the biggest cost of software. It might be the biggest cost of development, but it isn't the biggest cost a software company faces.
The biggest costs of software are in sales, marketing and support. You don't have to take my word for it. Look at the 10-K of any (profitable) software firm. Depending on the firm, 10-25% of expenses are in development and the rest is primarily sales, marketing and support. (the exact mix varies depending on the company) Any publicly traded company's financial statements will tell you, in general, that most of their money does not go into development.
This is why I think it is incredibly short sighted of companies to nickel and dime their development teams. Sure for a bootstrap operation it might be tight, but for an established firm, development is not where the costs are. (That's not an excuse however to get stupid with spending like a lot of dotcoms did) Development is typically just 15% of cost and it is what can actually differentiate your product. Cutting money on development is typically the last place you want to do it.
I'm not that old -- 30 -- but would like to say this on the topic. I've been in IT for 10 years and also have a 4 year degree (independent study). My take: * Younger people tend to be somewhat more rash in their decisions and may go down a couple of unnecessary roads before arriving at their final destination. * Experienced people have the background to be able to better anticipate the impact of a decision and as a result can make better decisions more quickly. Yes -- these are very broad generalizations.
Thanks! At least someone thought it was funny, and not a troll, or flamebait.
The porblem is rooted in the fact that it is hard to observe software quailty. Given that, firms have an incentive to shirk on quality and save money by hiring cheap inexperienced labor. The customers won't find out until too late that the software isn't nearly as good as advertised.
Obviously there are some software companies that make money mostly through repeat sales or recurrent licensing, and they have less incentive to shirk, becuase there is always future revenue to lose if the customer is not happy.
Of course the other side of the coin is that the guy with the house and kids really needs to job for the money, while the kid can quit whenever he feels like it because he has no responsibilities.
So I guess it depends on what kind of wage slave you're looking for.
The real sad thing is that there are still 35+ year old programmers (although I have all the respect for older COBOL programmers. I know of no young people who still use it). Shouldnt they be product-manager-types now? Mentoring/telling us young people what to do?? Are we sure that the old people hottly debating this topic arent just the old-hacks who couldnt cut it?? I hope to god I am not programming when I am 30 even. Programmers, are the prostitutes of the information age. Its pure grunt work -- leave that for the new grads who actually think programming is cool
And the dumbasses that believe it (and become apologists for it) are 50% responsible for the thousands of good programmers and engineers who have been cast aside like a bag of wet cat shit.
Remember, "IT" spans a wide range of work activities from the guy lugging PCs into cubes to be set up by someone else, to the CTO of a Fortune 100 corp.
So it has to vary by industry. Try looking at companies where maturity is an asset. I'm in the medical device industry, and I don't think we have a software developer under the age of 28 or so. At age 38, I'm the youngest embedded SW developer. Average age seems to be around 33.
The average age in other sectors such as banking seems to be even higher. I knew someone in that area who reported that her co-workers were mostly in their 40's & 50's.
I'd tend to say that companies that are so concerned about the age of their employees (teenagers! what an idiot!) are places I wouldn't want to work at anyway.
Come on! Every time you guys (well, mostly guys) experience a minor income glitch, or encounter a little life experienceâ"such as every previous generation has had to contend withâ"you feel betrayed by the universe. Really, you made more money, faster, earlier, and easier, than any generation in history. Even after the 'dot.com bust,' you're still so far ahead of the curve it isn't funny.
This doesn't mean your problems aren't real or hard to cope with. Just, please, get a little perspective!
...is the study of history. The people most valuable in IT are the ones who have witnessed the changes the computer world has gone through. As a (somewhat) mature IT professional, I don't make the same stupid mistakes in programming that I did as a kid, and I'm much more interested in what I'm coding for, how it will be implemented, and who will be using it. As a kid, I could care less. My basic motto was "Figure it out or smurf off." Also, at 32 I type faster and think more clearly than I did in my 20s and teens. I can also come back to code I haven't looked at in awhile and understand it. When I was younger, those were all major stumbling blocks. I may charge more for myself now, but I do better work. The smart company will hire me despite the higher price. The company that hires the kid because he is priced cheaper and is eager and energetic looking is making its own proverbial bed. I'm all in favor of hiring young programmers and developing them into experienced and successful ones, but you need people like me to help get them that way.
It was well-commented and well-intentioned, but I immediately saw flaws in the code, the overall approach and even a bug. All within minutes.
So am I better programmer now at 41? Hell yes.
Currently I work around programmers who are even far older than myself, and I respect them. They're sort of like old curmogeonly bricklayers: leave them alone and eventually they're finish something. It may not look flashy or fancy, but it'll be more solid than the Hoover dam!
I'm in my early 20s and I tend to find that employers don't want to employ me because of a lack of experience. Degree wasted.
and get a Ph. D. Teach the young coders, if business seems to think you inept compared to them.
- If you are older, married and have a family you are less excited about staying till unholy hour of the morning finishing a project that has an imminent deadline tomorrow...
:-D
You could say that about any married, family person. You could also point out that they'll tend to be more reliable schedule-wise Monday mornings and less reliable due to family emergencies.
- If you are older, you are more set in your ways and would rather use the skills you already have rather than learn something totally new and off-the-wall.
Crass generalization. Anyone can be stuck in their ways.
- While some older people become wiser, and take criticism better, many others do become grumpy old men, and find it hard to be taught and criticised by the kids in their teens that apparently know some things better.
You covered both ends of the spectrum there.
- When you get older you won't be willing to accept some of the jobs and tasks (especially the thankless ones like sysadmin) as readily as the younger people.
Doubtful. You could argue that the younger people want to get the glam jobs and aren't willing to do the scut work.
- Last, but not least (especially in today's pitiful economy), when you are younger, you will settle for less pay, more hours, and your insurance will be cheaper.
This is really the only reason that actually has some truth behind it. The most important part is less pay.
Your hooters example doesn't prove anything. There are some 50 year old ladies out there who are really hot and some 20 year old girls who look half dead.
Why can't you be a coder in your 40's? I'm not talking about every 40 year old out there, I'm talking about YOU! Each individual's effectiveness in ANY job is only as good as the amount of work they're willing to put in.
Remember, you're only as old as you drink you are!
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The old people are on to us. This is no time left, the generation war has begun, thow down your shackles and fight. Opress the opressor! We will be victorus!
I agree that there is an undertone of negative vibes when interviewing or being interviewed in IT today. I just left my position as Chief Technology Advisor for a billion dollar international oil company and I am one of the unique. I am a 29 year old female. (And I *worked* my way to the top.) I spent many nights on planes travelling overseas where my best friend was my passport and a roll of handi-wipes...just in case they were sending me to a place that had not yet heard of the invention of Charmin.
I have been exposed to the IT industry for over 20 years as my father was in the field. I remember punch card tabs being the coolest thing to play with! Now that I am a bit older and my father is 56 yrs of age and still maintains his skills in the industry, I can see a deffinite bias towards those of age. Any reference to age, such as highschool and college graduation, has been removed from his resume. Now he is receiving more responses than ever. Before he did not even deserve a, 'Thank you, we're not interested,' letter. I, on the other hand, receive calls, emails, and requests from companies on a more frequent basis. And I feel it is because I am younger as our qualifications are very similar with one minor detail, he has far more experience than I.
I have worked with, interviewed, hired, fired and let-go many a skilled IT resource. Therefore, I can say with some degree of certainty that age DOES make a difference. As you get older your priorities tend to change. Gone are the nights that you stay up all night until the wee hours with your buddies partying, playing LAN games and ordering pizza for dinner. (And reheating it for breakfast and lunch the next day!) You'll work all night if you have to because you love to code. This is a plus to someone such as myself who is ultimately responsible for the output of said code and project. But here is the problem, jsut because you are older, does not mean that you do not work to get the job done when needed, in my experience it has been that you tend to make less mistakes or have enough experience to code more intelligently and therefore, can go home sooner.
However, I fast found that the myth of 'younger is cheaper' is just that, a myth. I was lucky enough to work with several people who were older than I, though I was their supervisor, and I would not have the project run any other way. I had a project that was slated for failure come in on-time, under-budget and with extra bells and whistles that the client loved and consequently, hired us to do 10 additional sites in their overseas offices.
The reason? Because the resources on my team were older, wiser and faster because they knew the sound short cuts that could be made and have a successful product in the end. There was no guessing or supposition to their architectural understanding of the task at hand. Only some with experience could do that on a regular basis. So by extension, these resources were less expensive in the long run.
If I have a new developer, how long and what will be the TOTAL cost that it is going to take one of my experienced developers or Team Leads to help them ramp up? How do you teach a young developer how to test why an application is breaking by reviewing hundreds of lines of code with no comments, quickly, efficiently and above all intelligently? Experience will pervail time and again because they have been through this type of exercise time and again and know what to look for first.
I am not saying that fresh starts and young minds aren't a positive thing to have in a company. For this you create a sense of longevity and a new round of knowlege transfer capabilities in a company, but who is going to transfer this knowledge? Other teenagers or college-age kids who are just learning your company as well as technology trends and development skills themselves?
One argument a colleague of mine brought up was that the technology that is available today, i.e. Java, was not available when my father was going to school so we're all starti
When i applied for my first IT professional jobs i was 19. I was rejected by 4 companies strictly based on my age. How do i know it was based on my age? Because the jobs that rejected me were jobs that i applied to via the net (monster, computerjobs.com) so they had no idea what i looked like or how old i was. I received a phone call from those companies saying that they were very interested and would like to have a face to face interview. When i went to these interviews the people that i spoke with were all shocked to find out i was only 19. I was puzzled by this because my resume says that i graduated high school in 2000. I dont know anyone that is over 19 years old and has just graduated from highschool. So, did they expect to see an older more experienced person at the interview? Once the shock of my age wore off they began to test my technical knowledge by asking me the typical computer job questions. I answered all of their questions correctly and i had the experience they wanted for most of the applications that these companies were using (mostly the basic office applications in an NT enviroment). At the end of those interviews they told me that i was a little young and that were looking for a person a little older and more experienced. WTF
I've worked in companies where the metric was lines of code produced. They would make fun of the way I'd walk away and then come back with a notebook full a few days later, spend a day programming. Oddly, my "software" was what sold the product. Since when did most hiring practises make sense? And since when did anyone "in charge" care about software quality? Quality doesn't sell, features sell. Rather, poor quality sells more Professional Services and Support contracts, so perhaps there is a reason... just ask JDE.
This proved disasterous. This was my first job out of college and I was a fish out of water. I was trained in object-oriented programming for Windows and UNIX and web applications development. When all the experienced people were laid off, I now had to test mainframe applications and run batch jobs. I had no idea how to do this, so the ONE person they kept on had to train ALL of us on how to do it. Pending projects were delayed, IS and Production teams had to wait on us, and the whole system plan was FUBAR.
Younger people thinking faster is BS. You have to learn how to walk before you can run.
Things have changed since then - and you follow the change for a while.
There was - and still is - a lot of money to be made coding.
But sooner or later, spending your life coding is the last thing on your mind.
"Ah ! There's a new language to learn out there !" you say. And you find, one day, that it is hard to learn.
So - why bother?
Get a management position if you can.
Management positions are underrated - but the best place to be in when you want to move things.
A couple of good folks working for you are the best, most efficient software development tool you can find anywhere...
And if you do it right, both the folks and you are even going to have fun.
I'd be taking him aside and reading him the riot act. He's a dangerous manager.
Aside from the fact his "younger/better" is a gross stereotype, he's also setting himself and my company up for the probability of an expensive age discrimination lawsuit. Discriminating in hiring or advancement on the basis of age is a violation of federal law (and quite a few state laws). Just think what happens when some qualified but older applicant who got passed over gets to a lawyer and deposes the supervisor's coworkers about his statements.
As one ages, one becomes wiser.
Maybe when you reach the age when being a 'code-monkey' is to your disadvantage, why not just do something new? Carry your expertise into a career as an independent consultant or work on small programming projects for companies (as an independent)?
I know an independent consultant and he's in his mid-thirties. Hes very bright and I (at the age of twenty) work at a similar pace when we collaborate. Of course I still come up with all the good ideas!
People do have more piece of mind when they percieve they have a more competent person in their corner. His expertise is why he's so valuable. He's also well educated, but charges $100/hr for such things as creating access applications.
in a few years you'll be used to it.
I would think that if you do anything enough you start to dream about it. I don't know about everybody else, but I sometimes find solutions to problems in that half-alseep state that you get when you wake up but are not ready to get out of bed yet. I've dreamt of coding in my sleep and came up with solutions to problems that I was having the day before. I'm not sure if you refer to coding in your sleep as a factual thing or sleep being something that is a handicap to your coding.
... what people are expecting is that you should be managing groups of younger people, helping them enhance their skills etc.
Being self employed, I've noticed (now age 30) that I am respected more by clients who see me as someone who has been in the business longer... Perhaps they want to *HIRE* young, but they want to contract with a company that has more experience, maybe with some of those younger coders under the wing of the lead...
Someone to focus all the raw energy.
Isn't there a Japanese business archetype of the older man that guides and tempers the younger man, you need to position yourself as the lead/guiding role
meh
Whether it matters or not, there are going to be the idiots in the business world who keep making uneducated assumptions or heavily economically influenced decisions(derived from more business type people ) that will affect the technology world until the end of time or until we start making technology oriented business positions require that the applicant have some degree or experience in the technology field they wish to manage or sell. With this being said, I think whoever says younger people code better/faster than older people might have been misunderstood to some degree, but in the end probably has no idea what effect his/her decision regarding the previous assumption is going to have upon the future of technology for their company. Innovation definitely comes from new perspectives, but there is a key to sociological structures that keeps a corporate structure healthy. If one pulls in nothing more than a bunch of college kids to do work for them they are banking on the fact that the Universities have taught these kids information that is cutting edge enough to compete with the other corporations of a similar technology field. In my personal experience, not that I am an expert by any means, I have found that the typical college runs about 7.5 to 15 years behind the curve when it comes to teaching technology theory. This is part of the reason why so many trade schools exist to bring people up to speed with modern day technology. Of course, we all do realize that we have the MITs that churn out the genius minds, but those folks aren't going to be cheap either and are going to be hell to manage. For this discussion we can assume we are talking about the typical college graduate.
It has been my experience that the older folks might take a little longer and could be a little more expensive for the corporate structure, however the older generation has experience with the company and the vision of the company, has learned what works and what does not work, and has been knee deep in trying to keep up with the cutting edge technology their company is in competition with. This means that any corporation, or human resource/ management figure, who believes that they can reduce costs and increase productivity by cutting the senior engineers and replacing them with two green bows has a long term nightmare they haven't begun to fathom.
First, if said corporation/individual chose to take this path, they would quickly realize that all of the "new" folk they hired have no clue how their current software/technology works or what works best with their current corporate vision. Thus, you are going to have to keep "some" seniors around and hope you chose the right ones.
Second, later on down the road, they would quickly come to realize that the younger folks they hired, while they do have visions of grandeur and the energy level of a humming bird on liquid caffeine, don't have the experience required to know what does work and what does not work with the current day technology demands and limitations. While the older folks, who no longer work for them, had this knowledge readily available and being applied on a regular basis (thus the value behind keeping software engineers as long as possible).
Finally, the management would soon see that they not only were producing twice as much software but that their software bugs just doubled and their development time just tripled because they now have to spend extra time developing or fixing "new ideas" or "fresh concepts" without the guidance from their senior software staff. On top of this, they now have a group of younger generation people burning themselves into the ground to get these new systems working (which by the way I have seen some ideas from younger folks that are brilliant in concept but horrible in application). You also end up with lots of personal problems in regards to the younger generation because, after all, they are JUST out of college (or close to it), spent their entire time behind a computer, and now they have the freedom of a j
We are logicians. Logicians are not better at younger ages, especially in a dirty engineering logic with a lot of gotchas (not the purity of mathematics).
The perception of hiring managers are important for us because it determines if we get the work. HOWEVER: there can be no doubt, experience is something. Software is poorly understood. You are not taught the ins-and-outs at school, only through experience and apprenticeship.
Our sector simply has a false and temporary youth culture because just a generation ago people had mental blocks against computers, older people really didn't think the right way to learn whereas 14 year old would bend their mind around the new concept. However, now, things are different.
A bigger problem is just all the incompetent people... they grow older and just THINK they have gotten better, they make people that have used their time alive look worse.
Slashdot Journal on Monopoly News
This is not a new, or even suprising trend. Just wait till all those young programmers all live in India or Pakistan or some other place where large corporations don't have to worry about labor laws, or human rights, or unions. The greatest trick is that in seventy years we have been convinced that unions are evil and that corporations should run (into the ground) our civil service sector. Wake up, age-ism is the tip of the ice berg.
No idea on the piano, but a similar task, typing, from my perspective I've gotten much worse than when younger. The reason is, my fingers just don't work as well, not nearly as flexible and fast in the old finger joint area. My speed and accuracy have dropped by a big factor, typos galore now unless I slow down to reverse "ludicrous speed".
:p
I'd rather make the typos and not blow the train of thought, strange as that is a lot of the times...
And it's different for a lot of folks, my youngest sister, just 7 years younger, can still top 120 WPM, and we're both neo-geezers now. Go figger.
Age discrimination, oh well, the cool part of getting older is a much wider age-range of wimmins all look *real nice* to you....
Unions
Unions enforce collective bargaining, and union seniority rules can prevent an employer from getting rid of all the older workers. Depending on the size of your union, it may even help you get a new job when your company goes out of business all together.
Unions have been demonized in some places, and a poorly run union can do a lot of damage... but a good union can save your butt, too.
Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different.Duty is a debt you owe to yourself.
He just didn't want to pay you. Experience counts for something, and this hirer wanted something for nothing.
Younger minds are less likely to notice the incompetencies of management, and will tend to assume management must know what they are doing (after all, they got there somehow, didn't they, and of course they are paying the bills). "Seasoned" programmers aren't usually motivated by the same sort of "hype" used by some managers to motivate the inexperienced towards greater productivity. The actual effectiveness of the results a a long-term issue, and we all know that many in business are too myopic to make the connections in that regard.
Christie Brinkley was born in 1954. Would you snear at a chance to see her in a wet t-shirt?
Cher's not doing too bad either (though she does frighten me).
The thing of it is that you support the argument yourself:
Not everyone can be Einstein because not everyone is that gifted.
That doesn't have to do with age, that has to do with individual talent.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Coming to an answer faster doesnâ(TM)t mean they get the right answer. Younger minds try to reach the right answer often by scatter-shot; sequentially trying solutions until they find one that works. An older worker will take more time to consider the problem and arrive at a good solution in less time than the younger worker.
"Ask Slashdot handled this topic over two years ago. Of course, ..."
First jolt was the "been there, done that", perhaps implying ("handled") that the topic was done, over.
Second jolt was the "In the Obvious Way" answer -- "of course (any live person would see/realize)..."
Of course (perhaps I mean something else), I didn't read anything else. The first jolt + the possible second jolt led me here.
I am not logged in. I can log in now using the convenient form. Sure, offer only your kind of form.
A 34-year-old coder? You should have gone to Carousel four years ago. Does that mean you're a runner? Call in the sandmen! Renew! Renew!!!
...but not allways and sometimes even the other way. Here's my expierience in a quote from an earlier comment:
:-) )) who new all those new goodies and he has the RL expierience. I'd pick him over any hotshot podknocker on *any* IT related project I can think of. And I'd advise anybody to do the same. 3 Days with him are more worth than 2 weeks with a team of twens with all but a handfull of coding-years each. The same would count if he were fifty or just before retirement.
My Senior would squish me (and anybody else) (Score:5, Interesting)
by Qbertino (265505) on Saturday May 10, @12:18PM (#5926075)
On my last Job (all staff laid off on Dec. 31, 2k3) I shared the office with the Senior Developer, a 40 year old with 20 years expierience in Pascal/Delphi Developement who had a University Diploma in Informatics (that's what it's called in germany, go figure...).
He didn't know zilch 'bout OSS, Linux and the lot. I went about evangelizing him and six months later he was way ahead of me in gcc, Python, Java/Netbeans and co.
I was/am the young guy (well, sort of young (32
I'm shure you also get elderly coders that suck big time 'cause they won't budge a millimeter from using Mickeysoft. Just as you can get some 20+ hotshot that isn't worth the space he takes up, claiming that Flash is the successor to Java.
It works both ways and ageism may be, but, personally, I'd look at the woman or guy and the skills, learning ability and the ability to work solution oriented and *not* at the age. I believe there are some 60+ coders out there with whom it's a bazillion times more fun and productive to code a dynamic website project with the newest and flashyest buzz-PL than it is with somebody still wet behind the ears. But there are also some youngsters that would outcoede me with no sweat, there's no doupt about that aswell.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Hey, I know COBOL, and I'm "only" 28.
:)
:-o
Now, to be honest, I've never worked with COBOL professionally. The reason why I decided to learn COBOL is in fact pretty much related to the subject: At 26 I had just quit my job. As I browsed the job market, I realized that the jobs related to languages like COBOL and Fortran has sky-high salaries. That's why I sat down and read lots about COBOL.
Not just for the money, but also to help keeping a rare language alive.
And, well, you guessed it - I never got the COBOL job.
The reason most of the employers ask for COBOL programmers age 40+ is because they often have lots and lots of experience that a 26 year old never will have. Maybe I'll get one in 10 years, who knows.
Well, I'm 28 now, and I am currently learning C++, and I find it pretty hard to pick up. I started with BASIC at 9 and continued with assembler from 13 to 24, then I went on with Perl, Pascal and ANSI-C.
In fact I find it hard to learn C++ since I have the assembler "in my vains", to put it that way.
If I chose something else than asm back then, I'd probably pick up C++ easier today then what I do now. In contrast, I find it easier to pick up "functional" languages and other assembler variants.
By the way I'm the oldest guy where I work right now - the others are 18-25.
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
... on a hill overlooking a herd of heifers. The young bull says, "I think I'm going to run down there and fuck one of them." The old bull says, "you go ahead. I'm going to walk down there and fuck'em all."
More often than not, if you tell a young programmer to solve a shipping problem he'll head straight back to his desk and start coding. If you tell an older programmer to solve a shipping problem, he'll head over to shipping and start learning about the problem.
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
A resume is not an application. It does not have to include graduation dates. It does not have to include all of your past employment. A resume is a marketing piece, and while you can not lie, you can choose what information to include and exclude. If you are worried about age discrimination, remove some of these things. At least you stand a better chance of getting past the HR flunkie. The real hiring manager may decide to hire you after a good interview, even if that person has a leaning towards age-discrimination.
If anything the opposite is true, I'm in my early 20's and cant find a job without years of experience I don't have, Id work as a gopher at this point.
-troy
However, let me also state that I think that this is because I only bother to actually enter the code that doesn't have bugs.
I'm quite serious here. Although I would be cranking out more code when I was younger, I'd end up debugging, deleting, and rewriting it for just as long as it took me to write the first draft. Nowadays, I'm armed with so much "been down that road before" experience that I can see where the coding perils are before I even start.
Look at it this way... if you wanted to make an expedition to the south pole, would you want the strapping teenager who goes "Cool, I'll grab my backpack and then we can go!", or the veteran who says "Okay... give me a few weeks to get our equipment and supplies and to plan our route..."?
Coding is kinda the same way. There are, at first glance, a million ways of getting to the goal, but many of them aren't going to work.... and many of those won't reveal themselves as such until it's too late. Just like an expedition, much of the work in coding is in the planning before you even start.
I experienced the opposite thing: most jobs require a number of years of experience (5+, 10+) that makes it impossible for a young guy to apply for a job.
However, I'm a 40+ software guy - and the going is tough right now, no doubt about it. I have several friends who've been out of work for many months.
Bleh, a down economy is the time to get entreprenurial anyhow... ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Based on young (not legal adult yet) life experiences, nerd/not nerd, simple questions anyone can ask themselves:
Ever built and flown a model rocket while your friends were sitting around playing recorded music?
Ever sat home and read a sci-fi rather than go to the local high school football game?
Ever get yelled at by your folks because your electrical experimentations and projects were "going to burn the house down"?
Did your room look like a combination lab and garage, and did you blow your money on tools and supplies instead of the current trendy "cool clothes"?
For some reason, were you the only one ever questioned by the local police whenever mysterious loud explosion-like noises were heard in the middle of the night in your neighborhood?
Did other kids offer to pay you for their homework completion? Or a variant, get threatened if you didn't?
Those and more seperate the nerd from the masses!
Congratulations! Life will now be a breeze because from now on it is
...". Believe me, you will be the life of the
all down hill.
Here are a few tips that you may find useful:
As you ascend to greater wisdom and higher perspective,
you will tend to attach less importance the tedious and repetitive
tasks such as house cleaning and personal hygene. While this
demonstrates a certain maturity, you should not be surprised
when your friends (those who are not dead yet) start avoiding
you.
With increasing frequency you will find yourself lost in
conversations which you a)cannot hear and b) wouldn't
understand anyway. When this happens you can salvage the
situation by steering the conversation back to a topic that
you feel comfortable with. For example, suppose you are
with a group of young people and someone says something like,
"... those slurry fazbots are asfdfhsking and grrrtweep the memstix!".
You chime in with, "I remember when we used to back up data
with floppy disks. Those were the good old days. Of course
applications were smaller back then. We weren't spoiled like
todays kids are (no offense). No, we made every byte count.
Why I remember when I could fit an entire program onto a
single floppy
party.
Speaking of parties, I, um, that is. Well, it will come
back to me. See you later, thanks for calling.
Test 1 2 3 4
As a 21 year-old web developer who has worked in the field since I turned 18, my age has consistantly worked against me. I've had people e-mail me that my experience and skills blow the other condidates out of the water and then once they meet me in person tell me that they would never hire me and that I should feel lucky to get a position paying half the market rate. With the contract I have currently, I telecommute and the company I work for still doesn't know I only just started legally drinking.
Interesting. I have had similar circumstances where I dreamt the solution to a really tough programming dilemma. The brain has a way of subconsciously filtering things and grinding on them in the background. The second most interesting place for problem solving appears to be the shower.
Anyone over 30 who isn't in management yet is considered too insecure to take chances, too lazy to try to start their own business, or too interested in a free ride to jump between startups. The hiring managers all took chances, tried to start their own business, jumped between a lot of startups. They've paid the entrance fee and don't seem to like 30 year old programmers who just want a free ride.
Interview question 2: Is your mind clogged up with vestigial thoughts like it might be worth considering optimizing code inside of a C function in order to economize on user-system runtime? (Answer no, or I'll try one of the other thousand applicants.)
Interview question 3: Can you be a team player with up-to-date business processes?
Hi!
One of the challenges of any media business is producing a constant stream of content. If, for instance, SlashDot only put up two or three stories a day, far fewer people would read the site--and they'd have far fewer page hits on which to place banner ads.
BBC Online has exactly the same problem--they have to (in industry parlance) "feed the monster" to keep readers coming back. In interactive media, like SlashDot and BBC Online, they can't just post stories--they really need to post stories that will prompt readers to add comments. (That's why 'red meat' stories like Microsoft cheating on the antitrust deal get posted, and obituaries of Internet pioneers sometimes don't. The Microsoft stories generate all kinds of traffic.) The web site has a continuing need to come up with stories that will generate a lot of interest, generate user comments, and generate a lot of traffic.
Think of it as editorial trolling
In effect, the editors of BBC Online are trolling. Editors and producers keep lists of story subjects that can be dusted off and run any time--even if the subject has been covered before. They're called "evergreen stories" because (like the trees) they never change from one season to the next. I've worked at one of the major television networks in the U.S., and I've seen the whiteboard listing evergreen stories--including "new concerns about Internet security," "Internet dating--is it for you?" "Internet dating--these people found romance!" and a bunch of others. "Age bias among computer programmers" is just another evergreen story that can be run on a Friday afternoon (typically the slowest news period of the week).
Is there any truth to this age bias notion?
Read the article critically: the article, and the "study" on which it reports, are based on anecdotal evidence. (Even when the study throws statistics around, the stats are based on what people told the researchers.) There is anecdotal evidence that Martians landed in Roswell, New Mexico--which is a far cry from saying there's any real proof. While somebody looking to cry "the sky is falling!" can quote anecdotes of people who can't seem to find a job after taking a class, there are plenty of us old folks out here making a buck.
A little anecdotal evidence...
Case in point, me. I'm 44, mostly bald, with quite a bit of gray in what hair is left. I'm working on-site for a local client, with a team of 18 programmers whose average age (including the summer interns) is about 23.
The anecdotes suggest that younger coders are more productive; they write more lines of code; and that they are willing to work longer hours. Nope, nope, and nope. The hands-down champion code writer is an embedded guy who manages during the day, and codes at home all night. The absolute go-to programmers on the team are all in their 40s. And when the project was in crunch time, those same 40-somethings (including me) were the ones staying late, putting in the time, grinding out the project.
The kids? Hey--they have dates. They have plans for the weekend. They're generally (not always) gone at 5:30. They can spend all day asking questions before they write a line of code--and we have to carefully review their code before we release it into production. The old folks on the project are the acknowledged experts on the language--and we're using C#, which only appeared two years ago.
I don't mean to dump on the young people (and several of them read SlashDot). Several of them are extremely talented. But the older developers are much more comfortable working with new tools and platforms, much more experienced (and relaxed) working in a high-pressure environment, and are much more capable of sucking it up and delivering when it's crunch time. We have been there, done that, and will do it yet again.
And yes, Virginia, we get paid a lot more.
Being able to produce better quality code is great, but you are rather useless if you don't want to share that knowledge with anyone else.
"It's Dot Com!"
Simple things like:
- Thinking before you code - 'cause you know from past experience that it will not only be faster to implement the same functionality, it will also have less problems (uncovered bugs) in the future (guess who usually has to fix the bugs) and will be more easy to adapt when (not if) the requirements change.
- Finding out that most problems end up being variants of stuff you've done or seen in the past - different names, different industries, different languages and still the same patterns appear behind problems (and solutions).
- There is NO language, development methodology, OS or whatever that is right for all situations - there is no silver bullet, different things have different strenghts and different weaknesses.
- No mater how much you know, you can always learn something new from someone.
... (there's a lot more)
Anyways, i've recently came to the conclusion (by once again being face with people that should know beter but don't) that most IT professionals seem to be stuck at being Knowledgeable (Answering the Hows) and never to grow to become Wise (Answering the Whys) - this has beem pretty disapointing to me, so forgive me my rant.By the way, wisdom comes from experience but age does not necessarily implies being wise.
Is this what you call a troll or whatever? I'm a COBOL programmer and I'm 25. I'm not sure where everyone gets this idea that young people have no lives and can work +60 hours a week. I got concerts to go to, ass kicking to attend to in jiu-jitsu class, beach parties to enjoy, and lots of bars to blow my money at. Most people on this site forget that there is another world outside of programming and Slashdot. Yeah I know heresy! Whatever this will either not get read or fall on deaf ears.
im gonna be young forever.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
seÂnile
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of old age.
2. Relating to or exhibiting memory loss or mental impairment associated with aging.
Hmm... young equals inexperience... Age equals maturity....
I would rather have an experienced old man who writes the code right the first time...
than a young kid who does it in half the time wrong. then 6 months down the road has to rewrite the program because it can't due something that wasn't orginally specfied in the project...
experience is everything!!
I see that often, but not because someone is younger.
If yodon't ave a family, people expect you to work late becuase 'you have notheing better to do'. Its wrong, it suck, but it happens.
ell, I have a wife and 2 kids. They no my wife is a stay at home mom, so guess who gets the last minute work so other people can pick up there kids? me. Of course I don't mind it opccasionally, stuff happens. When it become regular, I just don't do it.
Women get time off far easier then men. I don't know how many times I have seen women leave at 3pm to pick up there kids. No one cares, but if a man starts doing it, people start to grumble.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm not a fan of unions and wouldn't like to see them dominate the IT sector.
this sig deleted by another sig
Teach them wrong on purpose. Then, the companies will have no choice but to keep you on.
I think not....
just felt the need to contribute that
"To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individu
Damn! I would LOVE to make straight pay after 40.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
What about all the other IT jobs that do not involve programming?
I started out as a lowly Technical Writer and 3 years later I'm a regional quality manager. I have staff who are older and younger than me.
There are many other roles where experience definitely actually adds value - Project Management, Service Delivery Management, Sales, etc...
I hired a Service Delivery executive in his forties who did Data Center management for 15 years, then left to a variety of jobs before getting stuck in the unemployment trap. I asked the potentially biased question of how would he take to working in an environment of 20-30 somethings and a boss nearly half his age. I was so impressed with his humble and honest answers (and of course his wealth of experience), I hired him on the spot. It was also smart of him to ask for a salary range comparable to the 20-30 somethings, which meant I could stay in budget and get much more value in terms of experience.
Older programmers just need to stay abreast of the trends and see where the "older" jobs are. If programming is going in favor of younger staff, ageism prevailing, rightfully or wrongfully, it's time to explore other alternatives.
E.W. (as opposed to eeeeeww)
I would say the big problem is that all college projects fit into semester sized projects ... four months. How are you going to learn what big league procrastination is if your project can be done in four months?
... the really big projects take no less than a mega-caffeine fueled 72 hour hack fest to complete :)
Hell, most of the projects I had in college were one or two week projects, which of course meant fscking off for 10 days and hacking through it in a mean all-nighter. I spent four years learning that there wasn't anything I couldn't pull off in a caffeine fueled all-nighter.
Which is nothing of course like real life
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Another stupid thing is the editor saying they covered it 2 years ago when they covered it on May 9th too. I guess that's coz the Slashdot search sucks so bad.
Raging about Slashdot on Slashdot for my 500th comment. Beautiful.
Random is the New Order.
Overlooked here is the fact that younger workers not only get paid less, but are generally far easier to persuade/intimidate into working long (unreasonably so) hours; most "younger" tech types tend to be single-male-mid-twenties, either unmarried or no kids. Add to this the "not knowing any better factor" and you have an all-too-common scenario (especially in the game industry).
There is no doubt that younger minds (brains) learn faster. This is well documented. We reach our peak somewhere in the late teens to early twenties with males being exceptionally bright at this point. Not only do they learn faster, they think faster and they can work longer at a stretch and do it more days in a row.
You just wish your ID was as low as mine! I used to be proud to have such a low id, but not so much now. Slashdot most
I've studied this for more than 30 years. I've found that there is no mental slowing caused by age. There is mental slowing in many people, but it is not caused by age.
I'm 32. I started in computers when I was 8 (few years before PCs became available). I first started in programming and back then coding had to be structured, be commented and most importantly not crash, freeze or generally blow up without putting a concerted effort into it.
Then M$ came along in 1995 and released a huge pile of crap masquerading as an OS called Windows95. I feel justified calling it this because I was one of the outside beta testers and got see personally what it was worth. The structure was there (barely). Commented? HA. And as for the 3rd criteria, well, for you younger folks, computers aren't supposed to crash & lockup when you happen to sneeze near them!
This is just an opinion but since M$ seems to be doing so well producing error-riddled software, a lot of other companies are doing the same thing. It's almost like this is becoming the norm. This might explain why experienced coders are being let go.
I use myself as an example. I was in charge of Beta testing. I was fired because I refused to sign my name to a document stating that a particular piece software was as error-free as possible. I knew it wasn't because the errors that I had found and submitted were never fixed. Why? Because the owners of the company wanted to programmers to work on the new changes they had proposed. There were new changes every 2-3 days so no wonder errors weren't being fixed. The final reason I was given was that my vision of the company wasn't the same as managements.
I guess this was, in essence, true because setting me up to take the fall for crappy software when the customers started screaming certainly wasn't my view!
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
Age discrimination is not legal if the job is open to persons between 25 and 64, it should not exclude anyone between those ages based on age, but it's common, and there are legal ways to do it. Up here in Oregon, the desert of opportunity, some companies are requiring bachelor's degree within the last 5 years. That's legal. Others are hiring 'interns', requiring that you be a college student willing to work for low part-time wages to get in the door. So few are hiring, forget it.
Aren't we paranoid now?
Does it really matter that a young person might be able to crank out an extra 50% more code?
Remember what O(n) means. If you multiply n by a constant, it's still O(n).
Also, we're all supposed to be producing faster than ever anyways. Just a few years ago, a software company might have weenie PCs with hardly enough RAM to enable compilation in less than 10 minutes and the system thrashes so badly during any run you can't add an extra line of code edgewise. Now you can do all the work before lunch (drove my manager crazy since he and I thought it would take a week when I started).
My message to programmers.
- First of all, when it comes to getting hired it doesn't matter what you know, it's who you know.
- It doesn't matter how fast you can produce boilerplate code.
- Find new profitable uses for the computer. Computers are meant to achieve objectives faster and better. Do you see people doing something or failing to do something that may be better done or achievable with a computer? Imagine a system that can search a file cabinet for a particular piece of information while making less noise than a vacuum cleaner or electric typewriter. That's scary.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I'm a 49 yo who started coding in 1988 as a second career. I have never had a problem finding work both in the US and here in New Zealand, but then I happen to be a really good coder. Don't be so quick to jump on ageism as an excuse. Look at your resume and your ability. Maybe you could go into construction or something and be more successful.
If I count from when I was typing things in on the machine at the local Radio Shack, I've been programming for 24 years now. The last few years, I've been noticing that a lot more of my code works the first time. I'm not sure if the tools are getting better or if it's just more experience but I get a hell of a lot more done today than I did ten years ago. Leaves more time for Quake.
There's an old saying that has the ring of truth:
"First class people hire first class people;
Second class people hire third class people."
Speaking as a 17 year old boy with a programming hobby, I can hardly see how this affects me negatively. :D
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Being recently out of college and working with mostly 5-10 year veterans, I must say that those 5-10 years of experience have made my coworkers better able to follow office policies and not take crap from management. I and my younger coworkers are better able to take on new tasks and learn new things easier. Most importantly, we're more ambitious about these new things. The younger set are generalists, while the older set are specialists.
Which is better? Any organization needs both, but when it starts to reach the extremes that I see in my office, I start to become concerned. The younger set takes on every new task, every available opportunnity, offers up new ideas and thoughts. The older crowd is more apt to sit back and, "just do the job."
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
I think the problem is that you have too much experience, and he can pay some snot-faced kid straigyht out of college a lot less that he would pay you. Not to mention that they think you might bolt as soon as something better comes along. I've experienced this too, and it pisses me off.
You're 34 and you still read slashdot? What's wrong with you? :)
I work at a major ISP and we have one of those kids working for us as a UNIX admin. He will get the job done, and he will get it done fast. But he will start the day before it's due, without testing, pull an allnigher and then hand it in, broken, or at least with problems. For his last project he was supposed double check his work, but he didn't. So some customer couldn't send or recieve mail for several days, when it should have been minutes.
What you didn't say about the article is about the quality of work. I'm Gen-X as well, and I had to take over one of this kids' projects. I think what was said on my behalf is a really good summation: "You won't get it the next day, but when you get it, it will be done right and it will work".
BTW, I don't drink.
Alcohol is a wonderful invention. On women it has fairly wonderous side effects like making them take their clothes off. Typically people who drink don't like to be around people who don't. Makes them feel alcoholic.
And face it, your manager (ie, boss) will probably be someone who drank a lot and was chasing girls at frat parties while you were up the wee hours of the night trying to figure out where you had left off the semi-colon to get your program to compile.
Is either choice better than the other? All depends on what you want. Some people work on getting what they want out of machines, some people work on getting what they want out of people.
Open Source introduced many of us to asking others for help. Now a developer might spend as much time in Google Groups as in an O'Reilly book, or trying to figure out a problem - because someone else has either asked about it, or can provide the answer. This is a great thing for development, but makes experience what economists call a "public good" - it's in the interest of hirers to get cheap, energetic talent that is willing to ask for help, rather than putting a premium on experience that they can Google or IRC for free.
So its not so much agism as experience no longer being as useful as it was. Of course there are many exceptions to this, but its prevalent enough to be visible.
Bottom line is: kids out of college work for much less money than geezers with experience. Big corporations care about one thing: the bottom line. Geezer geeks are either self-employed or saying things like "Would you like fries with that" or "Welcome to WalMart" at their current jobs.
When one starts out on the piano, one sees individual black blobs on the page. Those blobs eventually start to form notes, and you learn the notes.
All I see now is canon, lied, nocturne.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
In the greater Boston area Dunkin' Donuts will give you a senior citizen discount if you are a programmer over the age of 35.
Yes! I used to solve many a shadowmap problem in the shower back when radiosity and dest*src blending was the hip lighting method. The tiles got me thinking about two dimensional bitmaps and how different shapes projected onto them.
I think you are right, but exploring the wrong topic. Sure you get better as you get older, but the more important issue is how good you are. A good programer is 10 times the programer an average one is. (is 10x a bad one...) I've seen a young fresh out of school programer take 20,000 lines of code, and in 3 months output 3,000 lines that did the exact same thing, plus a few features that we desperitly needed, but had no clue how to fit into those 20,000 lines. The programer who wrote those 20,000 lines was one of the oldest programers on the team. (In his defense he did admit the program grew byond the origional specifications, and as it is needed for bootstrap it had to be ready fast, that doesn't excuse not refactoring it into something better)
Hmm....let's apply this thinking to CEOs:
Younger folks have more stamina, so they could go 14-16 hours a day:
1. Attending back-to-back excruciatingly boring meetings.
2. Writing memos.
3. Making phone calls.
4. Going to press conferences.
5. Traveling.
6. Catching up on random things on the weekend.
7. Shmoozing clients by taking them to the golf course, dinner, sports outings, etc..
8. Anything else...
The older guys just won't be able to keep up with the younger set on this, and they "cut their teeth " on "old" methods of human interaction and business practices. After all, it's a different world now from what it was back when those older guys were in their twenties, isn't it?
So, does that mean older CxO's should be fired and those positions given to any old uni grad who took business and happens to show some promise?
You're obsolete!
====
Crudely Drawn Games
The fact is that there are many candidates to choose from for any open position, and hiring managers are always looking for one way or another to eliminate an applicant based on any concievable characteristic regardless of the likelihood that characteristic affects the ability and commitment to getting the job done.
How wrong the concept can be is easily shown by the record of a person I used to work for, John Fenn.
Now John is a little up there in years. He's 84 or so years old. John's mind however is as active as anyone 1/4 his age. Plus he has great enthusiasm for his work, and a tremendously broad experience to draw from. John's current employer offered him a job when his last employer forced him out.
Now John's new employer has found itself with a great deal of prestige, because John was awarded a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For work he did while in his 70's.
If you judge people's capabilities based on age, you are making a HUGE mistake. Those 20-somethings? They haven't proved that they are capable of anything but littering a source code repository with crap. Now that 40 year old coder? Do your think he would still be coding if he didn't enjoy it? Or wasn't succesful at it? Chances are that 40 ear old coder has turned down promotion to management a number of times - he enjoys coding to much to leave it.
Remember - Albert Einstein turned down opportunities to be head of the IfAS, and the first President of Israel for the simple reason he liked what he was doing better.
The fact is that one of these hiring managers would have turned down what Time now calls the 'Man of The Century' because he didn't make that jump to management.
It's too bad (for them) because I am going to eat their lunch with my team of 40+ year old programmers.
I think you've hit upon the primary reason for the age discrimination in hiring software developers, whether you realized it or not!
I used to program myself, back when 64K was "a lot of RAM".... I wrote and marketed my own computer bulletin board package, among other things.
I got involved with other things for a while though, and when I decided to re-vist programming, it felt like I was starting over from scratch - only the learning curve was steeper than when I first started out.
I took a course in C programming, and tried to grasp the new "object oriented" stuff -- but ultimately, my heart just wasn't in it, and I elected to concentrate on PC hardware and support instead.
While working in support, along-side software developers, I've notice a pattern. The older developers bring some good experience and techniques to the table (which the younger developers are usually eager to grasp onto and make use of in their own coding), but they don't usually have the flexibility and speed to pick up new things like the younger programmers do.
Depending on the type of project, I'd personally prefer either the older, experienced developers, OR the younger, eager developers. I don't think it's so much a case of discrimination, but merely trying to match the strengths and talents to the task at hand.
If your needs involve a lot of updating of old code, working on a project that requires lots of structure and planning, or you only develop using a "tried and true" programming language (such as C++), the older developers will probably have more experience than the younger folks.
On the flip-side, if you crank out projects on tight deadlines and tend to "jump around" with the languages used for individual tasks, it seems like the younger guys (and gals) are quicker to wrap their heads around the changing needs and crank out some solutions quickly. Older developers tend to fight and ask more questions, such as "Do you really HAVE to write this thing using VB? I'd really prefer to do it in Java." (They might be right too - but that's not always the point. Sometimes, companies just have rather senseless reasons for what they want, and as a dept. manager, it's simply your job to get coders who can produce the results requested, quickly.)
As a 20-year old programmer who would like to either someday work for a technology company or run my own, I do consider age a factor in the hiring process. However, I know I'm not always going to be "young" which doesn't necessarily qualify me for a job because my youthful energy translates into more productivity. I also realize, and hope that other managers realize that experience is also very critical to job peformance.
.02.
A coder that's 30 might have picked up some knowledge about complex systems design that some 20 year old has yet to learn through experience. And it could be the other way around. Perhaps the 30 year old has only been coding for a couple of years. Or a 40 year old, or 50 or whatever.
My only advice is if you are applying for a job where you think age may be a significant determining factor in whether you are hired or not, try and turn it into an asset, not a liability. Talk up your skills and experience, and how you can save your employer time and money because you can avoid common mistakes and use the things you've learned to make better systems, save time and be more productive.
I hope to run my own software related company someday, and hope I still I have the good notion to look at the whole picture when hiring people.
My
As a proud member of the youngins (19 here) I can say that the companys are screwing themselves up the you know what by hiring younger people. experience counts, even moreso in the programming fields, since most people don't make the same mistake more than, say, five times, the longer you;ve been coding the less time you'll take to code something because you'll have less errors. Just like sports the more you practicve the better you get.
It is certainly an issue -- now, and don't mistake this for flamebait, but look at the situation realistically. Does ageism exist? Yes. Does reverse ageism exist? Yes. Will we ever be able to do away with it? No. On the upside, we all start out young and, unless we're met with an unfortunate accident, we all eventually grow old.
It is the other -isms, namely racism and sexism, which have graver implications on society than does ageism.
Since i'm to old to work, i figure i'm to old to spend, that's why i kept my 15 year old car and jerked my funds out of the bank (U.S.).My money now resides in Canada,i grow my own veggies, or go to farm co-op produce shops.the only money i really spend is about $5.00 in gas a week to visit my family, and 58 bucks for electricity and phone.Otherwise, i'll be driving that car for awhile.I also only buy from folks that are 50+ years old.Oh, i have my own business, too.I give discounts to those over 40.:-)Under 30 15% more.
The real reason that ageism is practiced in so many enterprises,including IT, is simply that the young and inexperienced are more compliant and malleable,therefore less trouble, than their older counterparts. To offer the sop that the young, "think faster and retain larger logical mappings", ignores the role that intelligence and talent play in any given individual's ability. I can't believe it would be the best overall choice to shove aside a 40 something woman with a 140+ IQ to accomodate a early20 something man of more modest capacity. But if that woman is a reluctant and difficult square peg who won't go into the operation's set of round holes,then guess who gets the job.
Talent also can trump age; in particular, I know individuals, now in their fifties, who have always been able to pick up and to play an instrument new to them with only a short practice. Again, however, the trenches will be manned by those who play the tune management wants to hear.
Gen-X'ers are 30.
It seems that having graduated from college and not having any "experience" is a worse crime than being older. I've been looking for a job as some kind of programmer or something even mildly related for the last 2 years and haven't been able to seal the deal, because I haven't had any "real word" experience. They can always find someone with way too much experience willing to work these low level jobs, so I can't even get my foot in the door.
Meanwhile, I have to work meaningless secretarial and accounting jobs that are getting me nowhere. It just seems to me as an outsider, that it is impossible to get a job unless you have several years of experience, which is something new grads do not have, since what you did in school, apparently, didn't mean a thing.
i was working hard, doing good in school. I had a lot of momentum at the time of graduation, but hit a brick wall, and it has been nothing but frustration since.
Internships?
It seems now that people should focus less on getting the "top classes," and more on looking for good places to intern at, as that's actual, referencable "experience."
Maybe not as good as "I wrote a Java language compiler in a afternoon on a C-64 for SCO," but it'd be something to point to as real-world experience.
It would seem that the hiring of younger people is a trend in many career types and isn't going to change any time soon.
:)
Hindsight is 20/20 vision, but it would seem you have to plan for your 30's in your 20's by either starting your own company or working your way up a company ladder into as high a managerial position as you can get.
Alternatively you can lie about your age
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
it's better a young coder than a older one ....
who is better than a female coder
who is better that a black coder
the problem is not about age, sex or color of the skin.
The problem is about the missing brain inside the head of our chief
I know some piano players. The only way for them to stay proficient is to play all the time. If they learn a piece, put it away for a few months and go back to the piece, they pretty much have to start over.
Any task or skill takes continued practice to maintain any level of proficiency. Exposure to new versions and variants keeps the skills fresh.
I think older coders (at least if they have anything at all going for them) have knowledge about human interactions and business processes that younger coders just haven't been exposed to. While writing code is a technical exercise, really understanding WHY you need to develop an app is more closely associated with gained knowledge.
Does this mean that older programmers have an advantage in the real world? Probably not. Old = more experience = more pay. In a world where even Indian programmers are being outsourced to the newest low cost provider, us old f***s don't stand much chance...
Dogu
I don't think us gen-xers will have any trouble in the years ahead due to age. remember there are many, many more baby boomers then us, and as they retire in droves, it will be very challenging to fill their void.
competition from cheaper markets is another thing altogether...
lastly, like many of you, my company let go close to 70% of our former staff. all we have left now are senior engineers. duhh!
I taught myself to program at 12 (didn't even have access to a computer until I was more like 16). By your analogy I am that child prodigy grown full up.
That has no impact on the fact that now that I am nearly 39 so I will be laughed off as too old for the biz.
So it has nothing to do with the initial age, it has everything to do with the current age.
By your late thirties you are preceived as too old. Or perhaps a late starter. Or perhaps just about ready to burn out. Or two expensive. Or god knows what.
Quite frankly, unless you know somebody, you arn't going to get the job.
In point of fact a lot of people my age from my field *did* burn out. A good number more have become so set in their ways about various things to be nearly unemployable. That would be true of any field.
I, myself, just single-handedly wrote the thing my current company is betting its future on. I can think of several DC area government contractors that totally missed out me because I was old enough to have opinions and know my shite, and they were looking for a young buck they could mould into a fekless government contracting drone.
Part of the problem is that we (IT and CompSci people) have been burdened with mystique: Young is pretty, sexy, better, and more filling. It's not that different than the mystique of almost anything that hit its stride after 1978. The Mtv generation was not supposed to get old you know, so everyone associated with such things must be replaced with a new young buck every three years.
The core hidden message seeping into HR drones everywhere is simply this: Nobody much had experience in this new tech when it was new, and it did just fine, and that five year old has mastered WinDoze better than I ever will, so clearly experience has no value in computers.
So when the fly-by-wire car is finally released, "blue screen of death" will have the meaning we all expect, and we can point at some highschool student as the father of the automobile accident...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Actually, I can guaran-fsckin-tee you I know much about this. I studied on it all the way thru high school and several yaers in college. Why? Because I love american music (not just jazz/blues but also appalachian, american folk, bluegrass, true country, gospel etc). It seems all you can do is stand around and bitch about what you suspect others are fakin' or mistakin'. I wasn't totally OT, I was agreeing with another poster who correctly pointed out that the earlier poster made an inaccurate analogy. But I'm sure it was so far above your head it was an honest mistake.
It is you who needs to STFU.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Because I feel that I am too young in the game (26, with 4 years work experience). I hardly think me (or anyone else) will get worse because of age. Ok, the older we get the less we show extreme enthusiasm, but I am sure we get the job done much better.
Seems the software industry is full of crap as usual. I blame the people hiring for it.
Well your college should teach you how to spell years correctly.
/. And to add on things to threads. It's really fucking classic.
Also, you should say guaran-chkdisking-te because you've never had cause to use fsck in your life because you are a fat know nothing liar who has never used Unix and only recently joined Slashdot because you are a newbie.
And I'm not surprised you, the apotheosis of "fucking idiot", is a recipient of some fucking trash liberal arts piece of shit degree in Music or some shit from a Podunk college. You are incapable of a computer science or any science degree. This is grossly apparent when I observe you and your postings.
I laugh at you, your lies, your need to be a part of
You remind me of Derek Smart or maybe even Serdar Argic in terms of total ripping the fabric of space time with fucktitude potential. Then again, those two have actual jobs and a real identity, so I have to take that back.
Amazing. Fledgling fucking ass. You should take your know everything bullshittery to UseNet.
Too bad more companies aren't outsourcing their HR departments, rather than IT.
Yeah, right.
Ironic, that the one implying the other has no real identity is the same one (ipse ipsum!) who is too pusillanimous to post using his, if, in truth, he has any! AC indeed.
Again ironic, and for your information, jackass, I was fscking a NetBSD installation at the precise moment, the exact time I wrote that. Using it with a non-trivial SAMBA setup (that was suggested to me by one of the maintainers... uhhh SAMBA, not NetBSD) to keep a private client from using the nasty NT and paying too much for what he wants to do and being insecure at the same time. You see, I know when you can afford to use CHKDSK and when you can't afford not to use fsck. Everybody uses the BSD stack; some are just better at it than others and so admit it.
Also for your edification, I neither pursued nor attained a degree in music; I took the equivalent of three full years of Jazz instruction (and paid for it and my regular tuition from playing with several groups) at the same time I was getting my degree because I wanted to learn/live music, not teach it, dipshit. Some things you do out of necessity (or at least pragmatism), some out of love.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Hey, actually, I am mopping floors for a living. Got my own small maintenance company, growing at an exponential rate. And I earn *much* more money from it than my 5 years at HP programming in C++, VB, and ASP.
Plus, mopping floor is good for your spirituality. It keeps you humble and enables you to meditate on important values (or to uml in your head the next killer app)...
Are you a programmer or developer?
:: carpenter : general contractor
programmer : developer
If you want to be a programmer, accept the unrelenting siege of people who will stay up all hours coding for half your salary. The younger you are, the more likey it is that you will do this.
However, I have never seen young kids or low-cost overseas coder doing things that are required of developers. For example: driving a requirements-gathering process, insisting on design reviews, or battling a project manager for time and resources to QA their software.
In the realm of well-paid developers, we see the other side of the "ageism in IT."
As far as shops that subscribe to the ageist sweatshop philosophy described by the original poster: prepare for an expensive and punishing lesson.
You dont have NetBSD, you dont know how to use it. You are simply lying. A bitter little bitch. You do not use Samba, you dont know how to use it. Your last sentences with FSCK, CHKDSK and BSD is hilarious. Very revealing. It makes no fucking sense and if you elaborate, the fraud that you are will be even more apparent.
You dont know Jazz, you dont know how play any instrument. You are a lying fraud that exists only in 2 dimensions. You are a farce man. A sham. Keep it up.
Actually, I'm generated by a bot.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
Well, let me daemonstrate my ignorance, then.
Do you have to have every sentence that uses diction above the fourth-grade level explained to you? When I spoke about when to use fsck and when to use CHKDSK, I was talking about when to run Redmond OSes and when to run *nix-like OSes, you complete retard. It's a literary device -- using the part to represent the whole. It's called litotes and has been around since before the days of the Roman republic, for crying out loud. Be sure to lick the spoon clean.
Can I bum a sig? I left mine at the office.
I write everything using state machines. They can avoid many conditionals, but not all.
Consider that any if expression considers factors which are:
A properly done state design eliminates by ifs that are based solely upon the event data. Seperate events should have been used, resulting in different actions.
An if that was based solely upon instance data that had values before the event can be eliminated. If based solely upon data known in advance, It could have been represented as a seperate state.
However any condition that is based both on instance and event data is a true conditional and cannot be eliminated from a state machine.
That is why transition guards and decision points are found on State Transition Diagrams.
I snicker. Laugh. Crack up at you. I wasn't talking about your fucking convoluted shit writing style. I was talking about the technical holes in your statement. Oh well, often when people are FUCKING WRONG about something, they try and sidetrack the discussion with knowledge about literary terms.
HAHAHAHAH. You are the best fucking loser I have ever seen here. You dig your own grave all the time. As to licking the spoon clean. Sorry, when a monkey spoons up his own feces and tries to feed that shit to people I don't bite.
You have never used Unix in an administrative capacity. You dabble with it and show off your skills which are all remedial. You are a Windows jockey. You click mouses and used MMC snapins. Nothing more. You don't program, you know jack shit about networking equipment. You know nothing. You are a helpdesk employee and you fanaticize about being real.
You are keeping it real here, REAL DUMB. What a fucking poser loser. All your posts are a testament to your insecurity and lack of technical knowledge.
if you could program, that might be true. but since you are a fucking loser, evreything here by you is typed in with your own little fingers to show the world what a big smart man you are. ohhh la lah.
To use a Javaism, I see people using Lists when they need to use HashMaps, and HashMaps when Sets would work (actually, more often using Lists when Sets would be best).
That includes code that inserts an item in a List, then runs a custom check to make sure there are no duplicates!!!!!
How can you just say they can "choose a container" when they don't even know why they would choose one container over another?
That's the problem I see. We are nowhere near close to being at a high enough level to have any programmer that doesn't know what a hashtable is or why to use one instead of a list. The programmer still has to know generally what kinds of things are going in a container and make some intelligent choice about how to treat them. The compiler and even runtime would just incur way too much overhead to guess what kind of container should really be used.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Today, a person with that much experience might be valued, but maybe not. The compiler coding techniques employed by recently graduated masters of computer science might be too different. A close fit in a mixed team would seem too hard to the hiring manager.
Starting in the nineties, the image of the young dot com web coder and of the young (teenage!) hacker captured the majority of the public mind-space. What we called script kiddies passed for deep-thinking intellectuals in the public mind. Executives are creatures of fad, as any American worker (or Dilbert-reader) knows all to well.
All this fluff just provides cover, though for deeper trends. One trend of long standing is the difficulty that managers have of picking the best or the most productive code workers.
I worked at a company many of you have heard of, where the company-driving code was written in tremendous haste by a pampered over-paid coder who just never had time to do anything right. His bosses needed everything yesterday. The problems this troubled code base caused everybody else in the company were legion. The company has not progressed either technically or financially since that time three years ago. How could the financially-driven invstors who wanted to ride the dot-com cash cow have known that he lacked the depth for the job? May as well hire a promising youngster who'll work 80 hours a week.
Other trends are the aging of the workforce, the lower salaries being paid to younger coders and guest workers from the third world. One trend not noticed much is the negative value of management. Which, nowadays, happens to be young management.
For example, any living observer has noticed the popularity of Linux. Lots has been said about this. I'd like to add the fact that there are no (or few?) non-coding managers on the development team. Probably no MBA's at all. Since most of the collaberation is done at a distance, the age of most of the participants probably isn't known to the central figures of the project. There were few or no face-to-face interviews, no intense puzzle-oriented interviews. If several of the key people do all their coding between midnight and 9 AM, no executive committee frowns.
I18N == Intergalacticization
I took up the fiddle at age 23, never having picked up an instrument in my life. Less than two years later, I'm playing old-time music in bars and at dances. Many adults who take up an instrument that requires the kind of fluidity demanded by the fiddle can't do it, but those same adults will never be truly accomplished martial artists, or dancers, or painters, or anything else that requires that kind of motion. There's nothing particularly unique about the kind of movement required to play the fiddle, except that the same manner of grace isn't ordinarily contained anywhere in most people's lives, and so they have no experience with it. Think of explaining how you break down a programming problem to someone who's never programmed in their life - they don't even know where to begin making simpler steps out of a complicated problem. Ordinary life doesn't really call for this kind of analytical thinking.
[Best Hugo Weaving voice] I'd like to share a revelation I've had during my time here...
Things don't move as fast as a lot of people make out. At the end of the day, software development still revolves around data structures and algorithms, then around a few common paradigms that express them (OO, procedural, FP, etc), then around languages that provide concrete tools based on those paradigms. There are lots of different applications now, each with a few idioms of their own, but they all come down to the same basic concerns: how do I store, manipulate and present the information that's important to me in this particular field?
Most of the "fast paced" development you hear about today isn't really that new at all. It only seems so if you've read the hype but haven't experienced it, and if you don't have a framework into which you can put it. To the 20-year-old studying a course at university and looking at going into the industry, your server-side scripted e-commerce application using CGI, PHP, ASP, J2EE, GEE WIZ and any other (D)(E)TLA you care to mention is the latest and greatest. To a 20-year veteran of the programming business, these tools are just different protocols for what is really a very simple data presentation exercise, the sort of thing you learn in a day.
I remember in my teens (early '90s) I used to think Windows programming was impossible. I could write a tool using a DOS-based library to make pretty graphics demos, but this GUI stuff was all too hard, and I avoided it for years. Inevitably, when I "turned pro" a few years later, I had to learn enough about it to write some front-end stuff. Do you know what? Once I actually sat down and read a book on Windows programming for a few hours, suddenly I could do prety much all the stuff the other guys could. I had to learn the message-driven architecture used by Windows, but that's quite natural. There were loads of APIs, but you just look them up when you need them. Sure, there was the office MFC specialist, who really did know a lot of stuff off the top of his head that the rest of us had to look up, but most people aren't at that level even in tools they use routinely. The point is, once I needed to do it and did my homework, it wasn't all that different to other things I'd done before.
I had a similar experience just a few weeks ago. As a long-time desktop apps programmer and occasional web page dabbler, I'd always been curious about how things like CGI scripted, database-backed web sites worked, but assumed it was some kind of black magic that would always be beyond me. Then I found it would be useful to write a bulletin board for a web site I help with, and did a bit of homework. Perhaps half a dozen articles later (basic CGI -- it's really just another very simple protocol; two or three to brush up on Perl; an introduction to MySQL; a well-written introduction to using the MySQL module for Perl) and hey presto, I've gone from a guy who understands procedural programming, relational databases and SQL to a guy who can write a whole bulletin board system for a web site, in less than a week.
Most of the "new stuff" that you "must keep up with" really isn't complicated if you know the basics. It might seem so to young and enthusiastic guys who have limited experience and thus don't yet appreciate the big picture. To someone who's been around a while, it's just another variation on a familiar theme. Sure, there are genuinely new developments from time to time, but most of the "new stuff" really isn't. It's kinda sad that so many people employing software developers don't get that, but at the end of the day, it's their loss...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I should have weakend my original comment to more accurately reflect the instructor's statement that if statements "may" indicate design weakness, and that you should examine each one to make sure it's appropriate.
John
Being a 28 years old programmer, I can tell you that I'm not as fast, nor as witted minded as I was. GREAT young programmers (by great I mean top 1% programming class) are far more creative, though five years work will turn them into ME (revenge...).
The hability to create is affected by age, simply becouse you have more experience and previous code to choose from, meanwhile, new programers reinvent the whell every day, leave space to new ideas.
It didn't help that the person is 32 years old
when ever i hear these words, and i do all the time. i repeat my personnel motto:
"youth, talent, and skill will always lose to old age, cunning, and deceit".
i cut my teeth on IBM-1402 plug boards for accounting systems. 90-column punch cards came after words; but i regressâ¦
you may still be hurt by this typical observance of everyday life. I canâ(TM)t ease your pain, itâ(TM)s a part of life. so with grandfatherly advice, (i'm 50 years old ), i cast my second personnel motto to you: "if you are looking for sympathy, you can find it between shit, and syphilis in the dictionary."
Apart from a period of three years when I was seriously ill, I have worked in IT continuously in the UK for many years until April 2002.
I am a well-qualified IT contractor with a proven track record of success with several written letters of commendation, having produced software fit for export. I have been without work for just over a year. Despite my very best efforts, I have had two interviews, neither of which secured employment. My CV attests that I have worked for blue-chip clients in chemicals, computing, telecommunications and utilities over many years, and its contents are true and verifiable - portraying a fair, not exaggerated picture.
I was dismissed before the end of my last contract; I had given over four years of good service to the company. Fair enough!
Though I am reasonably fit, mentally agile and competent, the outlook looks particularly bleak, since I am 54 years old. This is seen as a heinous crime in some circles. Believe me when I tell you that I am not ready to stack shelves in B&Q yet!
I should like to continue working, as I have no desire to retire. I don't want to be a part of the retirement ghetto culture that has been cultivated of late. I have no need of government exhortations to work, since I want to continue while I am able to do so. In any event, my pension fund is practically worthless, so I must go on if I can and if circumstances will permit.
I have noticed a disturbing trend to overspecify jobs excessively. Presumably this is aimed at cutting down the numbers of applications that are received. One job I spotted wanted three years experience in a particular product. It had only been released for 6 months, so anyone who applied for that job had to lie about experience.
No response comes from my many applications for lower-paid permanent jobs. The phone does not ring; agencies pay scant attention to what is said when I phone them. Their disinterest is a sign of the times. I know from experience that IT is cyclical with a downturn every 10 years.
Even though I have studied new technologies during my unwelcome break, I suspect that I shall remain unemployed for many more months, as I see no sign of a change in the market or the attitude of employers. This is sad but true. I wonder how many more people there are like me in a similar predicament that is unlikely to have a quick resolution. What a terrible waste of people this is and a damning indictment of our superficial society.
Has anyone seen any quantitative study how much better software is performing since the personnel departments started to sack the older personnel and began to hire only younger people?
Personally I would have thought that they would benefit from a range of ages - getting the best of both worlds!
I think there's a real problem with the adaptability thing. I'm 33 and find that as I get older I get more sceptical about stuff.
For example, 10 years ago, I was in a company using a bunch of Fortran programs communicating with each other by writing to shared files. I was appalled by this outmoded way of doing things, and raring for a rewrite in proper OO C++, communicating through COM. My colleages didn't listen to me, and today I think they were right. Their Fortran code was stable, worked fast enough, was well understood within the company. There were no compelling reasons for rewriting.
Pragmatically it was a good decision.
Now, I find it's me trying to argue for this kind of pragmatism, in the face of fresh out of college coders who know nothing but Java, and assume that the only thing to do is rewrite in it. It's kind of a pain to be told that I don't understand the Object Oriented way of doing things when I've been writing OO code since 1989 and have enough perspective to compare Smalltalk, C++ and Java.
The problem is, I know the technology moves fast, that some things which were wise five years ago are really out of date. I'm willing to adapt. I also know other things are eternal. And that sticking to them despite the fashion us the right thing to do. The problem is, how the hell do you tell the difference?
I think pattern languages are a good idea to document the timeless way of building, but these days they're such a hot topic, that, for example, books on Entrprise Bean Patterns are rushed out containing patterns that are nothing but fixes to get round flaws in this version of the Enterprise Bean specification. Next year, the new spec. will fix it, and the pattern will be out of date.
Many pattarns seem to me to be ways of getting round the flaw that Java is strongly typed, and has neither generics nor multiple inheritance. But the kids are religiously swallowing these patterns as the revealed truth about how to design code.